The Atacama Cosmology Telescope is a project to map the microwave background radiation at arcminute angular resolution and high sensitivity in three frequency bands over substantial sky areas. Cosmological signals driving such an experiment are reviewed, and current progress in hardware construction is summarized. Complementary astronomical observations in other wavebands are also discussed.

1 Departament d’Astronomia i Meteorologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Av. Diagonal, 647, 08028, Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain 2 Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, Largo E. Fermi 5, 50125 Firenze, Italy 3 Istituto di Radioastronomia, INAF, Sezione di Firenze, Largo E. Fermi 5, 50125 Firenze, Italy 4 Subaru Telescope, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, 650 North Aohoku Place, Hilo, HI 967...

A relatively unexplored phase space of transients and stellar variability is that second sub-second timescales. We describe a new optical observatory operating in the Negev desert Israel, with 55 cm aperture, field view 26 × (≈7 deg2) equipped high frame rate, low read noise, CMOS camera. The system can observe at rate up to 90 HZ (full frame), while nominally observations are conducted 10–25 H...

A two arm, opto-mechanical positioner mechanism is presented in this proceedings as a candidate steering system for the millimeter-wave XSPEC spectrograph. The design is well matched to the expected target density on the sky, and meeting all requirements of the Cerro Chajnantor Atacama Telescope (CCAT), site environmental conditions (e.g., operating temperature and power dissipation), and the p...

Kozo Sadakane, Akira Arai, Wako Aoki, Nobuo Arimoto, Masahide Takada-Hidai, Takashi Ohnishi, Akito Tajitsu, Timothy C. Beers, Nobuyuki Iwamoto, Nozomu Tominaga, Hideyuki Umeda, Keiichi Maeda, and Ken’ichi Nomoto Astronomical Institute, Osaka Kyoiku University, Asahigaoka, Kashiwara, Osaka 582-8582 National Astronomical Observatory, 2-21-1 Osawa, Mitaka, Tokyo 181-8588 Liberal Arts Education Cen...

The Receiver Lab Telescope (RLT) is a ground-based terahertz observatory, located at an altitude of 5525 m on Cerro Sairecabur, Chile. The RLT has been in operation since late 2002, producing the first well-calibrated astronomical data from the ground at frequencies above 1 THz. We discuss the status of this telescope after 18 months of operation and plans for the upcoming observing season. The...

This paper outlines a new telescope operations paradigm that is intended to achieve low operating costs with high operating ef-ciency and high scientiic productivity. The paradigm is based on the existing Principal Astronomer approach used in conjunction with atis, a language for commanding remotely located automatic telescopes. This paper describes a telescope management system called the Asso...

The resolution of astronomical imaging from large optical telescopes is usually limited by the blurring effects of refractive index fluctuations in the Earth’s atmosphere. In this paper, we develop a lucky imaging system to restore astronomical images through atmosphere turbulence on 1.23m telescope. Our system takes very short exposures, on the order of the atmospheric coherence time. The rapi...

The Discovery Channel Telescope (DCT) is a 4.3-meter astronomical research telescope being built in northern Arizona as a partnership between Discovery Communications and Lowell Observatory. The project software team has designed and partially implemented a component-based system. We describe here the key features of that design (state-based components that respond to signals) and detail specif...

The mission of CARA, the Center for Astrophysical Research in Antarctica, is to explore and exploit the unique conditions at the geographic South Pole and to lay the foundation for an ongoing national observatory. A small prototype user-facility instrument has demonstrated that very sensitive imaging in the thermal infrared can be routinely performed at the South Pole. The site should be furthe...