Powerful Telescope to Explore 'Cosmic Dawn' from Chilean Peak

The 6-meter aperture telescope will be installed near the top of Cerro Chajnantor, a peak in Chile's Atacama Desert. CCAT-p will provide insights into "cosmic dawn" - when the first stars were born after the Big Bang - as well as how stars and galaxies form and the dark-energy-driven expansion of the universe.

The telescope's novel optical design, high-precision mirrors and high-altitude location (over 18,000 feet) will give scientists important new opportunities for astrophysics and cosmology research.

Vertex Antennentechnik GmbH of Duisburg, Germany, is fabricating the telescope's components. The design review process took nearly two years, and some of the parts will take nearly as long to fabricate, such as the telescope's two mirrors, said project director Terry Herter, professor and chair of Cornell University's Department of Astronomy.

Once the fabrication is complete, the parts will be assembled at a location in Europe and functional tests will be performed on the complete structure. The telescope will then be broken down and transported to Chile in 2020, where it will be reassembled and installed on a concrete base on Cerro Chajnantor.

"This project has been in development for a long time, and it's exciting to see it so close to becoming a reality," said Martha Haynes, CCAT Observatory board chair and Cornell's Goldwin Smith Professor of Astronomy.

"With the short time frame for construction, we should have the telescope on top of the mountain and collecting data in a little more than two years."

That moment - what astronomers call "first light" - is on schedule to take place in the middle of 2021.