By/par Mike Fich (Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics, fich@uwaterloo.ca) and the Canadian CCAT team
The CCAT team is pleased to announce that a “Ribbon Cutting” event to open the Fred Young
Submillimeter Telescope (FYST) will be held Thursday, April 9, 2026 at our CCAT Observatory
site on top of Cerro Chajnantor! Two days of events are planned in advance of this in and
around San Pedro de Atacama to enable participants to accustom themselves to the high
altitude.
The mirrors for FYST have been shipped and are now in Antwerp they will be moved (from a
Rhine river barge) to an ocean going vessel for the trip to Chile, tentatively scheduled to depart
on Sept 17. The main telescope structure is now assembled with work still being done on
installation of various gear inside the structure and preparations for the arrival of the mirrors.
Heavy snows over the past few months at the site have prevented access and delayed the
completion of the assembly work by several weeks. The main diesel generators for the Service
Area at the base of the mountain are almost ready for commissioning (but this is on hold
pending official Chilean inspection and approvals) and then that Area will be ready for
operations. First light instruments (a broad-band camera and a heterodyne spectrometer) will
begin installation in February 2026.
FYST is a 6-meter diameter submillimeter survey telescope and is located at the best
submillimetre 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. Much more detail on the project is available.
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 that are now well-defined. Eight Key Projects have been identified. Four of these
Key Projects have Canadian leadership. The sixth (annual) CCAT Consortium Meeting (CCM6)
will be held Oct 1 – 3 at Cornell (and with zoom links). Everyone is welcome to join and hear
about the planning.
The CCAT team is very much open to new members. We are especially encouraging new
science ideas that we can explore with the amazing survey datasets we will create with FYST. If
you have an interest in participating in the technology development or in any of the Key
Projects please contact the author of this note, or Norm Murray (a CCAT Director), or a Key
Project leader (listed on the website above).