The South Pole Telescope is a 10-metre diameter telescope, located at the US Antarctic Program’s Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, that surveys the sky at microwave frequencies to study the Cosmic Microwave Background. The CMB is a snapshot of the very young Universe, 380,000 years after the Big Bang and long before any stars or galaxies had formed. Among other observations, the SPT has made the most precise measurements of the small-scale properties of the CMB. The SPTpol polarization-sensitive camera mapped the polarization properties of the CMB.
In late 2017, Prof. Keith Vanderlinde and colleagues completed their work on SPT-3G, an upgrade to the telescope camera. And in the winter of 2017/28, U of T astronomy graduate student Matt Young spent two months at the South Pole helping to install the new instrument
