Two More Institutions Sign Agreement to Advance Cornell Caltech Atacama Telscope Project to 'Revolutionize Astronomy'
- From: baalke@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: 16 May 2007 18:30:26 -0700
Chronicle Online e-News
Two more institutions sign agreement to advance Cornell Caltech
Atacama Telescope project to 'revolutionize astronomy'
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/May07/CCAT_agreement.lg.html
May 16, 2007
By Lauren Gold
LG34@xxxxxxxxxxx
In a major step forward for the Cornell Caltech Atacama Telescope
(CCAT), a proposed 25-meter aperture telescope that will be the
largest, most precise and highest astronomical facility in the world,
participants announced this week that two more institutions have
signed an interim agreement to join the CCAT consortium.
The two, the University of Colorado at Boulder and the United Kingdom
Astronomy Technology Centre, have committed to pursue formal
partnership and to identify the sources for full funding of the
project.
The $100 million telescope, to be built in the Cerro Chajnantor in
the Atacama Desert region in Chile, will take advantage of the rapid
development in bolometer array technology (instruments that measures
radiant energy) to answer some of the most fundamental questions of
cosmology.
Under the guidance of Riccardo Giovanelli, Cornell professor of
astronomy and CCAT director, and with private funding from retired
businessman Fred Young '64, Cornell signed an agreement with the
California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 2004 to collaborate
on the project. Cornell and Caltech remain the project's principal
institutions, with each responsible for 25 percent of the cost.
Planners hope to begin construction this year and to see first light
in 2013.
"CCAT is designed to optimize our ability to study the genesis of
structures in the universe," said Giovanelli. "It will allow us to
explore the process of formation of galaxies, which saw its heyday
about a billion years after the big bang, some 13 billion years ago;
to peek into the interior of the dusty molecular clouds within which
stars and planets form; and to survey the pristine chunks of material
left intact for billions of years on the outskirts of our solar
system."
The telescope will also be a powerful survey tool, working 30 times
faster than current facilities and with much greater sensitivity.
Large-scale surveys of extremely distant galaxies could give
scientists a better understanding of how galaxies were distributed as
they formed and how their clustering properties evolved.
Radiation at submillimeter wavelengths (longer than visible light but
shorter than radio waves) is normally difficult to detect from the
ground because it is easily absorbed by water in the Earth's
atmosphere. The Atacama Desert's dry climate and 5,600-meter (about
3.5 miles) altitude make it a unique and ideal spot for ground-based
far-infrared astronomy.
Project scientists are Terry Herter, Cornell professor of astronomy,
and Jonas Zmuidzinas, professor of physics at Caltech. Gordon Stacey,
Cornell professor of astronomy, is the project's instrumentation
scientist, and Cornell researcher and engineer Thomas Sebring is
project manager.
"Over the past two years CCAT has made excellent progress in
developing scientific instrument designs and strengthening the case
for construction," said Sebring. "CCAT will provide access to
astronomical data which is currently unavailable."
An independent blue-ribbon panel of scientists reviewed the CCAT
proposal in 2006 and gave it high marks. "CCAT will revolutionize
astronomy ... and enable significant progress in unraveling the
cosmic origin of stars, planets and galaxies," the panel wrote. "CCAT
is very timely and cannot wait."
For more information, see the CCAT Web site at
<http://astrosun2.astro.cornell.edu/research/projects/atacama/>.
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