Specifications

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) is a custom six-meter telescope that is located in northern Chile. 
It has the following properties (Swetz et al. 2010): (link is external)

PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF THE TELESCOPE AND OPTICS

 

Telescope Properties
 
Location
 
Telescope height12 mAltitude5190 m
Ground screen height13 mLongitude67° 47' 15"W
Total mass52 tLatitude22° 57' 31"S
Moving Structure mass40 t
 
 

Optics

f-numbera
2.5
Azimuth range
±220°
FOV
1 deg2
Max. az speed
2°/s
Primary reflector Dia
6m
Max. az acc.
10°/s2
No. primary panels
71
Elev. range
30.°5 - 60°
Secondary reflector Dia
2m
Max. elev speed
0.2°/s
No. secondary panels
11
 
 

aAt telescope Gregorian focus

ACT observes simultaneously in three frequency bands centered on 148 GHz, 218 GHz, and 277 GHz. These are often called AR1, AR2, and AR3 respectively. Celestial radiation in each band is imaged onto 32 X 32 arrays of transition-edge sensor (TES) bolometers. The arrays have the following properties: