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Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
The Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope is now ready to be assembled at its destination in the Atacama Desert. Planned to take up operations in April 2026, it will be able to look all the way back to the Big Bang, revealing new details about star and galaxy formation.
After a six-week ocean voyage, a week spent outside Chile’s Port of Angamos waiting to offload and another week trekking through the mountains, the first major component of the Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope (FYST) has arrived at its final home: the Cerro Chajnantor mountaintop, more than 5.600 metres above sea level.
The disassembled telescope was offloaded and trucked approximately 450 kilometres to the base of Cerro Chajnantor, in Chile’s Parque Astronómico Atacama. From there, the parts are making a careful ascent 5.600 metres to the summit, where the telescope will be reassembled to eventually begin its work studying the universe, with first light projected for April 2026. The University of Cologne is a project partner in the consortium. “I am especially delighted to be able to witness the safe arrival of the first high-tech components of the telescope on the summit after their long journey with my own eyes. We now are eager to re-assemble all the pieces, in anticipation of first light a year from now,” says Dr Ronan Higgins, astrophysicist and deputy project engineer at the University of Cologne.
FYST will be the most powerful telescope in the world for its mapping speed and sensitivity at its wavelength. It will detail star and galaxy formation from the earliest days of ‘cosmic dawn’, through ‘cosmic noon’, when most of today’s stars were formed, providing insight on cosmic inflation and gravitational waves from the very first moments of the Big Bang. It will also track the flows of gas, dust and magnetic fields across the interstellar ecosystem within galaxies.
The six-metre-diameter telescope is designed to operate at submillimetre to millimetre wavelengths. The novel optical design of FYST will deliver a high-throughput, wide-field of view telescope capable of mapping the sky very rapidly and efficiently. “We astrophysicists try to measure submillimetre radiation from the entire history of the universe, but most of the radiation cannot make it through the Earth’s atmosphere,” says Dominik Riechers, professor of observational and experimental astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Cologne. “Since FYST is too big to fit into a rocket, it is now being assembled at a location that provides us with observation conditions that are as close as possible to those in space.” The radiation is received by CHAI and PrimeCam, two unique wide-field cameras which serve as the ‘eyes’ of FYST.
“As the time for international celebration nears, we are especially aware of the significant potential that our long cooperation offers. Our world-class submillimetre telescope at, arguably, the best site in the world for its wavelength, will provide the basis for significant research by many astronomers for many years to come,” says Fred Young, Cornell University alumnus who has provided generous funding for the project over the years. The German project partners received funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG).
Although, as the driest place on Earth, the Atacama Desert is ideal for astronomical observations, reassembling the telescope at 5.600 metres will not be an easy task. Workers have to be trained and pass an exam to be registered to work at that altitude, and they can work a maximum of 12 or 13 days at a time. For each day they work at extreme altitude, they must spend a day below 2.700 metres. Casual visitors must use supplemental oxygen.
FYST is a project of CCAT Observatory, Inc., which consists of a Cornell-led collaboration, a German consortium including the University of Cologne, the University of Bonn and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, and a Canadian consortium of universities led by the University of Waterloo. The telescope was built in Germany, designed and tested by CPI Vertex Antennentechnik in Duisburg and first assembled in Xanten on the Wessel GmbH premises.
Images:
©Jürgen Rees, University of Cologne
https://uni-koeln.px.media/share/1743508560YS9g10BVrxCNdi
Professor Dr Dominik Riechers
Institute for Astrophysics, University of Cologne
+49 221 470 76027
riechers@ph1.uni-koeln.de
https://www.ccatobservatory.org/
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