CCAT
(Cerro Chajnantor Atacama Telescope, Cornell Caltech Atacama Telescope)
(25-meter submillimeter telescope plan for Chile)
CCAT (for Cerro Chajnantor Atacama Telescope,
or the earlier name, Cornell Caltech Atacama Telescope)
was a proposal for a 25-meter submillimeter
telescope intended for surveys.
The initiative failed to secure sufficient funding,
and some of the collaborators followed up with a less-ambitious proposal,
CCAT-prime (now in development as the Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope (FYST),
which is now commonly what is meant by a reference to "CCAT"),
a scaled down 6-meter design for the same site, which will carry out
much of the original CCAT's function and perhaps serve as a pilot for
an updated CCAT or CCAT-like ambitious future telescope.
The site (in Chile) has an altitude of 5612 meters,
an extreme altitude for telescopes,
which is very useful for submillimeter observation.
The original CCAT proposal was aimed for construction between
2010 and 2020. It was designed for a wide field of view (20 arcminutes across)
with wavelengths in the 200-3300 μm range.
Original CCAT's proposed instruments:
- LWCam ("Long wavelength camera") - images six bands ranging from 750-3300 μm.
- SWCam ("Short wavelength camera") - images three bands ranging from 200-448 μm.
- X-spec (600-1600 μm spectrometer).
- CHAI ("CCAT Heterodyne Array Instrument").
(telescope,infrared,submillimeter,ground,Chile,plan,past)
Further reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerro_Chajnantor_Atacama_Telescope
http://www.ccatobservatory.org/index.cfm/page/about-ccat/History.htm
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007stt..conf...32R/abstract
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006SPIE.6267E..2FC/abstract
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006SPIE.6267E..2CS/abstract
WaveL | Freq | Photon Energy | | |
200μm | 1.5THz | 6.2meV | begin | CCAT |
3300μm | 91GHz | 376μeV | end | CCAT |
|
Referenced by pages:
Atacama Desert
Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope (FYST)
submillimeter astronomy
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