By/par Mike Fich (Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics) and Norm Murray (Canadian Institute
for Theoretical Astrophysics)
The CCAT team is pleased to announce that a major milestone has been reached in this project:
the fabrication of the Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope (FYST) has recently been completed
at Vertex Antennenentechnik GmBH. FYST is now being prepared for shipment (after partial
disassembly) to the CCAT Observatory site in Chile and it should leave the factory by the end of
November 2024. Final assembly of the telescope will begin in April 2025 and telescope
commissioning will follow in August 2025. First light instruments (a broad-band camera and a
heterodyne spectrometer) will be installed starting in February 2026.
FYST is a 6-meter diameter submillimeter survey telescope and will be located at the best
submillimeter site that has been identified anywhere in the world. The CCAT partnership is led
by Cornell University with German, Canadian, and Chilean partners. The Canadian participation
is channeled through the Canadian Atacama Telescope Consortium (CATC) and includes
researchers at ten Canadian universities. The central camera module for FYST – a 350 micron
50,000 pixel device – is under development by a multi-institutional team led by Scott Chapman
at UBC. This camera will be the crowning jewel of FYST! Much more detail on the project is
available at the website https://www.ccatobservatory.org.
The CCAT team has been actively planning the science activities for FYST for several years and
the plans are now in a quite mature state. All of the observing time with FYST will be used in
large surveys. Eight Key Projects have been identified. Four of these Key Projects have
Canadian leadership.
The CCAT team is very much open to new members! If you have an interest in participating in
the technology development or in any of the Key Projects please contact either of the authors
of this note or a Key Project leader (listed on the website above).