The South Pole Telescope (SPT), a 10-meter-diameter telescope located at the National Science Foundation's South Pole research station, achieved first light in February 2007. Designed to conduct large-area millimeter- and submillimeter-wave surveys of faint, low-contrast emission, this telescope is a collaboration among the University of Chicago, University of California (Berkeley), Case Western Reserve University, University of Illinois, and SAO.
RG Facilities
For over three decades the CfA 1.2 meter telescope currently located in Cambridge, MA and its twin instrument in Chile have been mainly dedicated to obtaining what is by far the most extensive, uniform, and widely-used survey of dense, star-forming molecular clouds in our Galaxy.
The Submillimeter Array (SMA) is the world's first imaging interferometric telescope to operate in the major atmospheric windows from 0.3mm to 1.3mm. Located at the summit of Mauna Kea 13,386 feet above sea level, the array consists of eight 6-m movable antennas that can be positioned in different locations to provide highest angular resolution equivalent to an antenna of 0.5 km (0.3 miles) across.
