University of Waterloo-led team receives funding for advanced telescope

A grant of $4.9 million has been awarded to a team led by a University of Waterloo professor to help build a next-generation telescope. 

The funding comes from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and was announced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The team, led by Professor Michel Fich, is aiming to measure light from the earliest moments after the Big Bang, giving astronomers insight as to how the stars and galaxies in our universe were first formed. 

Fich said the funding secures Canada's position within the international consortium in developing the Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope (FYST), set up in Chile.

“This project is a natural next step for the Canadian submillimeter astronomy community, and will enable Canadian scientists to continue their leading role in discoveries in topics such as the first galaxies and black holes, dark energy, dark matter, neutrino mass, and gravitational wave physics,” said Fich in a release.

The telescope is part of CCAT-prime, a collaboration between Cornell University, the University of Waterloo led Canadian Atacama Telescope Consortium, Dalhousie University, University of Alberta, University of British Columbia, University of Toronto, as well as a German consortium of the University of Cologne, the University of Bonn and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics.

Juergen Stutzki, Universitaet zu Koeln and lead of the German CCAT-prime consortium said in a release they are glad to see their long-term partners are finally on secure financial grounds. “Their expertise in several of the science areas of CCAT prime has been and will be a welcome and necessary enrichment for the project.”