CCAT will be a 25 m telescope for submillimeter astronomy located at 5600 m altitude on Cerro Chajnantor in northern Chile. CCAT will combine high sensitivity, a wide field of view, and a broad wavelength range to provide an unprecedented capability for deep, large area multicolor submillimeter surveys. Science objectives include galaxy formation and evolution throughout the history of the Universe; the hot gas pervading clusters of galaxies; star formation, protoplanetary disks, and debris disks in the Milky Way galaxy; and Kuiper belt objects in the outer reaches of the Solar system. Instrumentation will include bolometer cameras, direct detection spectrometers, and heterodyne receiver arrays.
CCAT was ranked the highest priority among medium scale, ground based projects by the Astro2010 survey. This survey, undertaken by the National Research Council, a component of the National Academies, recommends priorities for the most important scientific and technical activities in astronomy and astrophysics for the coming decade. The survey report, Astro2010 Decadal Survey: New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics, was released on 2010 August 13.
The CCAT consortium includes Cornell University; the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the Jet Propusion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech for NASA; the University of Colorado; the University of Cologne and the University of Bonn; McGill University, McMaster University, the University of British Columbia, the University of Calgary, the University of Toronto, the University of Waterloo, and the University of Western Ontario; and Associated Universities, Inc. CCAT operates in the Parque Astronómico Atacama in northern Chile under the auspices of the Programa de Astronomía, a program of the Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica de Chile (CONICYT).