Atacama Cosmology Telescope

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) was a custom six-meter telescope that is located in northern Chile. The goals of the ACT project are to study how the universe began, what it is made of, and how it evolved to its current state. 

ACT extract the properties of the universe by measuring the Cosmic Microwave background (CMB). Since the CMB was released so early in the Universe's history, it contains information about the early universe (first science goal). But it has also travelled a long way since then and has had time to interact with galaxy clusters along the way. Such interactions leave a mark on the CMB which we can use to see those galaxies (second science goal).

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope took its final data in 2022 and has been decommissioned.  Most of its years of data have been made public on the NASA LAMBDA data archive. One final large data release is planned, labeled DR6.   

Official links:

• • https://act.princeton.edu/