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Session 75 - Infrared Instrumentation.
Display session, Wednesday, January 15
Metropolitan Ballroom,
An off-axis, wide-field, 10 m-diameter telescope is proposed for the NSF Office of Polar Programs Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. The telescope will be available on a proposal basis and will accomodate large focal plane arrays and CMBR instruments at wavelengths between 200 \mum and 6 mm. Site testing in the submillimeter and millimeter has demonstrated the superb quality of the site, and the AST/RO instrument has demonstrated the feasibility of operating a submillimeter telescope at the Pole in winter. The quality of the South Pole site, together with the size and accuracy of the telescope's primary (< 20 \mum rms), will make the proposed instrument an exceptionally powerful tool in studying everything from the formation and evolution of the early Universe to the formation and evolution of solar systems like our own.