About Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope Design Study

Our understanding of the formation, destruction and evolution of objects in the Universe requires a comprehensive view of the sky at millimeter and sub-millimeter (sub-mm) wavelengths. From the discovery of dusty sub-mm galaxies to the ringed nature of protostellar disks, the current generation of sub-mm facilities has opened a new window for astronomical discoveries. The EU-funded AtLAST project is making plans for a giant technological leap into a next-generation large aperture (50 meters in diameter) single-antenna telescope with a field-of-view of two degrees, run as a facility telescope by an international partnership and powered by renewable energy. The project is obtaining a feasibility study and telescope design that take into account the technical, operational and environmental challenges of such infrastructure and are able to achieve the transformational science goals.

The aim of this Collection is to collect outputs from the design study. In particular, this includes the science case studies, which are designed to set out the future advances in astronomy that motivate this new observatory and set out the technical requirements for the telescope and instrumentation. These are on the following themes:

• High redshift galaxies
• Circumgalactic medium
• Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect
• Nearby galaxies
• Our galaxy
• The Solar System
• The Sun
• Transient sources and variability

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 951815 (AtLAST).