South Pole Telescope

South Pole Telescope

The South Pole Telescope (SPT) is a 10 metre (394 in) diameter telescope located at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Antarctica. The telescope is designed for observations in the microwave, millimeter-wave, and submillimeter-wave regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, with the particular design goal of measuring the faint, diffuse emission from the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The first major survey with the SPT–designed to find distant, massive, clusters of galaxies through their interaction with the CMB, with the goal of constraining the Dark Energy equation of state–was completed in October, 2011. In early 2012, a new camera was installed on the SPT with even greater sensitivity and the capability to measure the polarization of incoming light. This camera is designed to measure the so-called "B-mode" or "curl" component of the polarized CMB, leading to constraints on the mass of the neutrino and the energy scale of inflation.

The SPT collaboration is made up of over a dozen (mostly North American) institutions, including the University of Chicago, the University of California-Berkeley, Case Western Reserve University, Harvard/Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, the University of Colorado-Boulder, McGill University, University of California at Davis, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Argonne National Laboratory, and the National Institute for Standards and Technology. It is funded by the National Science Foundation.