The Atacama Submillimeter Telescope Experiment (ASTE)

ASTE (Atacama Submillimeter Telescope Experiment) is a project to install and operate a 10-m submillimeter telescope in the high altitude site (4,800 in) in Atacama desert, northern Chile. The project is aimed to explore the southern sky with submillimeter waves as well as to develop and evaluate various instruments and observing techniques. The telescope was shipped and re-assembled in Chilean site in early 2002, including the establishment of the on site infrastructure. Following evaluation of the telescope and receivers, scientific observations such as supemova remnants, galaxies, star forming regions and proto-planetary nebulae, have been carried out since early 2003. The high-precision 10-m antenna was measured to have the surface accuracy of 18.9 mum and the relative pointing accuracy was 1.2" r.m.s. for both azimuth and elevation. The subreflector is equipped with wobbling capability. Several types of receivers have been on board the telescope; the heterodyne-receivers operating at 100, 230, 345, 500 and 800 GHz bands including cartridge-type receivers, as well as a bolometer system covering 350, 650 and 850 GHz. The spectrometer is equipped with an XF type digital auto-correlator with four channels each covering up to 512 MHz with 1024 bins, which leads to 2 GHz coverage. The control system is designed to be capable of remote control from several sites via network connection, from the base facility at San Pedro de Atacama (2,400 in altitude) or even from Japan.