South Pole Telescope

The South Pole Telescope (SPT) is a 10-metre (390 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). Key results include the first detection of B-mode polarization in the CMB, the discovery of over 1000 clusters of galaxies using the Sunyaev–Zel'dovich effect, the discovery of a population of high-redshift, strongly lensed dusty galaxies, and unprecedentedly sensitive measurements of the primary temperature and polarization power spectra of the CMB at small angular scales.

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 (SPTpol) was installed on the SPT with even greater sensitivity and the capability to measure the polarization of incoming light. This camera operated from 2012–2016 and was used to make deep, high-resolution maps of hundreds of square degrees of the Southern sky. In 2017, the third-generation camera SPT-3G was installed on the telescope, providing nearly an order-of-magnitude increase in detectors in the focal plane.

The SPT collaboration is made up of over a dozen (mostly North American) institutions. It is led out of the University of Chicago by project director John Carlstrom. The SPT program is funded primarily by the National Science Foundation and the United States Department of Energy.