South Pole Telescope
South Pole Telescope: View from the Bottom of the World to the Distant Universe
Jeff McMahon, Kathryn Miknitas, and Tom Crawford are all postdoctoral scientists at the University of Chicago and members of the South Pole Telescope Team. In the Antarctic summer season of 2006/7, the team raced to assemble a 10-meter (30-foot) telescope at the South Pole and this season they are upgrading and installing new equipment and running the telescope through its paces to collect more data about the mysterious cosmological force of dark energy.
The discovery of dark energy in 1999 stunned the scientific community because it suggests that the universe is being thrown apart by a repulsive force rather than drawn together by gravity as previous theories have proposed. By gathering data from large galaxy clusters in deep space, the South Pole Telescope will help astronomers learn more about when dark energy first developed in the universe and how it gained strength to become a dominant force today. Jeff McMahon will be first to arrive at the South Pole, his job will be smoothing out the telescope mirror by tightening thousands of screws holding it together. Kathryn arrives in November and she’ll install a piece of equipment called a Fourier Transform Spectrometer (FTS) that will calibrate each of the 1000 detectors on the telescope’s sensitive camera. She will also continue analyzing data gathered by the SPT. Tom is the clean-up man, adding an extra hand to whatever task is needed at the end of the summer season in late January and early February. Starting in early December the team will be blogging and sending audio and video clips of their work at the South Pole. Tune in for webcasts featuring scientists on the telescope team in December and January.
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