Submitted by Administrator on Thu, 23/03/2017 - 15:17
Several members of KICC have recently joined the Simons Observatory, a new astronomy facility in Chile’s Atacama Desert that will expand existing efforts to explore the evolution of the universe from its earliest moments to today.
The Simons Observatory will be located in the high Atacama Desert in Northern Chile inside the Chajnantor Science Preserve. At 5,200 meters (17,000 ft) the site hosts some of the highest telescopes in the world. The Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) and the Simons Array are currently making observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Their goals are to study how the universe began, what it is made of, and how it evolved to its current state. The Simons Observatory will add to these several new telescopes and new cameras with state of the art detector arrays. The result will set the stage for the next generation of CMB experiments.
The KICC researchers involved in the project are currently Anthony Challinor and Rupert Allison; they will be joined by incoming Kavli Fellow Daan Meerburg in October 2017.
