Claudia Cicone opened the meeting with a report from the Governance work package (WP1). She highlighted the resilience and flexibility that our team has demonstrated in the past three years:
– We have been able to adapt to changes and challenges and seek external input wherever and whenever needed, added Cicone.
Since the beginning of the project in 2021, more than 40 additional scientists joined the AtLAST consortium, and there is a constantly growing number of in-kind contributors to the science working groups.
A robust design
Substantial progress was demonstrated by the telescope design work package group (WP2). Matthias Reichert from OHB showed the full CAD model of the telescope. The design is now robust and allows for achieving all AtLAST's science goals, as well as being upgradable over the lifetime of the observatory.
The 24-meter-high weather tower installed by WP3 allows us to record the wind properties and to assess the wind gust impact on the telescope structure through detailed simulations performed by WP2. As reported by WP3 leader Carlos De Breuck, the second tower has also been repaired, so it is possible to now compare simultaneous wind data from both prospective AtLAST sites.
Advanced and equalitarian project
As pointed out by WP4 leader Evanthia Hatziminaoglou in her report:
– Modern facilities require modern operation concepts, and we cannot operate the facilities of the future based on concepts from the past.
In particular, a project as complex and big as AtLAST requires new and out-of-the-box concepts that allow for the maximum scientific output, while aligning with the expectations for an advanced and equalitarian project, that astronomers and engineers alike will feel satisfaction and pride to be involved in.
Powered by renewable energy
In their report presented by WP5 leader Sabrina Sartori, the WP5 team informed the consortium that they are organizing a final set of workshops with local stakeholders, in Santiago de Chile and San Pedro de Atacama later in December this year. Guillermo Valenzuela-Vanegas, postdoc at UiO, coordinates the workshops. From the same WP5 report, Isabelle Viole’s remarkable new analysis demonstrates that we can cut down the life cycle of CO2eq emissions of AtLAST's energy system significantly at low additional system costs.
Pioneering sub-mm astronomy
The WP6 team, led by Pamela Klassen, is in charge of investigating the key science drivers of AtLAST. The community is strongly engaged in this effort. Many different contributed talks, from a wide range of fields in astronomy, pointed out the need for AtLAST to study and understand processes and scales that are not possible with today’s facilities, including solar, galactic and extragalactic astronomy, and surveys both in the local and distant Universe. After releasing the Sensitivity Calculator earlier this year, Mark Booth and Pamela Klaassen held a hands-on session which allowed all the participants to get an introduction on how to use it.
Lastly, PhD student Alice Schimek (WP6) held the ESO lunch talk on October 10th, where she presented her recent modelling work (Schimek et al. A&A in press) aimed at predicting the sub-millimeter line emission from the high-redshift circumgalactic medium of galaxies that could be detected with AtLAST (but not with, e.g. ALMA).
An ambitious growing community
But that is not all. Not only the progress made by each work package has been remarkable, but we are also excited to see that the consortium continues to grow.
PhD student Bendix Hagedorn, who joined the consortium only recently, shared with us what impressed him the most:
– the main take away was how complex this kind of project truly is. I was aware of that on some level of course, but seeing how many details need to be addressed, all of them interconnected, was impressive and eye-opening. It is easy to forget how much work goes into teasing some information out of this universe when you look mostly at science ready data.
In Tony Mroczkowski’s words:
– Bringing all the pieces from all the WPs together has also made clear the next steps for AtLAST as we progress from a design study to a real project. We now have a clearer idea of where we need to go and what we need to develop in the next phase.
The future is AtLAST
The meeting concluded with a long discussion session about the next steps, which include expanding the consortium including new partners from Europe and outside Europe.
The future of the project certainly fills us with hope, and we are excited for the next steps to come. In Alice Schimek’s words:
– we are working on a project that will direct the future of astrophysics. A big telescope project that will be used by future scientists.
Contact information:
- Claudia Cicone, coordinator of the AtLAST design study project, WP1-Governance
- Tony Mroczkowski, leader of WP2-Telescope Design
- Carlos De Breuck , leader of WP3-Site
- Evanthia Hatziminaoglou , leader of WP4-Operations
- Sabrina Sartori, leader of WP5-Energy
- Pamela Klassen, leader of WP6-Science
For more info on AtLAST- design study visit www.atlast.uio.no
