CCAT  


The Cornell Caltech Atacama Telescope will mainly be used for research in:
  • Early universe cosmology
  • Galazy formation and evolution (specifically the star formation history of the universe)
  • Cosmic microwave background and the Sunyaev-Zeldovich Effect
  • Solar system astrophysics
  • Interstellar media, disks, star and planet forming regions
  • Kuiper Belt Object surveys and analysis


The Atacama Telescope Project
    Cornell and Caltech recently signed an agreement ot participate in a study for developing a 25 m class submillimeter telescope.  The telescope will be located near the summit of Chajnantor. 


General Information
  • A 25 m FIR/submm actively controlled telescope that will operate with high aperature efficiency into the THz 1 = 200 µm --> surface accuracy ~ 9 µm rms
  • Large format (32,000) pixel bolometer array cameras fill large field of view ~ 20' superb mapping speed 
  • Multi-object direct detection and heterodyne spectrometers


Aperature Size
 25 m
Wavelength Range
 200-2500 µm
Field of View
 20 arcmin
Surface Accuracy
 ~ 10 µm rms
Pointing Accuracy
 ~ 0.3 arcsec rms
Scanning Rate
 0.2 deg/sec
Scanning Acceleration
 0.4 deg/sec2
Pointing Knowledge
 0.1 arcsec
Altitude
 5600 m
Beam (350 µm)
 3.5 arcsec
# 350 µm Beams in 10' x 10' field
 30,000
Beam (450 µm) 4.5 arcsec
# 450 µm Beams in 10' x 10' field
 18,000



Requirements
  1. Water Vapor Burden: Need consistently lower burden than 1 mm to reach the short submm windows
  2. Surface Accuracy: Desire high surface accuracy (~ 12 µm rms) to obtain good efficiency in the 200 µm windown (1.5 THz)
  3. Field of View: Faint source surveys a forte - therefore requires large FOV > 5' which could be populated with 10,000 element arrays






Studies
  • Can go 40 times fainter than SCUBA/JCMT studies
  • Will detect millions of young and proto-galaxies in the submm bands in contrast to the hundreds detected by SCUBA/JCMT - get the one-in-a-million beast!
  • Will detect these galaxies in multiple submm bands, this yields "photometric" redshifts, hence distances and luminosities of the sources
  • Can detect galaxies at redshifts of 10 (if they exist) when the Universe was only 400 millino years old!
  • The number counts vs. luminosity and redshift detail the star and galaxy formation of the Universe
  • The 3 dimensional distribution of starforming galaxies traces the large scale structure of the Universe                                - Baryonic Density of the Universe                                                                                                                                - Matter Density of the Universe                                                                                                                                   - Dark Energy Equation of State


Baseline Instrumentation
  • Short submm wave camera
    • > 32,000 pixels (baselined SCUBA 2-like)
    • FOV 5' x 5', Nyquist sampled at 350 µm
    • Growth potential to 20' x 20' FOV (400,000 pixels)
    • Filter wheel covering 200. 350, 450, 620 µm

  • mm Wave camera
    • 740, 870 µm, 1.1, 1.4, and 2.0 mm
    • Slot dipole antenna coupled KID arrays
    • 1024 to 16,384 pixels depending on wavelength
    • 10' x 10', or 20' x 20' FOV

  • Spectrometers
    • ZEUS-like multi-object grating spectrometer
    • Z-spec-like broad-band and/or multi-object spectrometer
    • Heterodyne receivers


Camera Sensitivty

  • Computed for precipitable water vapor appropriate to that band
  • Confusion limits shown are 30 beams/source except for 10 beams/source case shown for CCAT


Science: Galaxy Formation
  • Find millions of distant star forming galaxies (z ~ 1-5) at rate > 103 hr-1
  • Submm SEDs provide photometric redshifts
  • Redshifted fine-structure lines for subsample
    • [CII] from 2 x MW to z ~ 2, 10 x MW to z > 5
    • Accurate redshifts
    • UV fields, properties of ISM within galaxies

    --> Star formation history of the Universe
     --> Evolution of large scale structure

Schedule
  • Study phase
  • 2010 construction phase
  • End-2013 dome and telescope mount
  • End-2014 primary mirror truss
  • Mid-2015 primary mirror completed
  • September 2015 first light



The Cornell Caltech Atacama Telescope is a joint project of Cornell Univeristy, the California Institure of Technology and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the University of Colorado, the Universities of Waterloo and British Columbia, the United Kingdom, and the Universities of Cologne and Bonn.


For more information about the Cornell Caltech Atacama Telescope, visit the CCAT Homepage.