The CCAT-prime collaboration is building the Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope (FYST), a 6-meter aperture submillimeter wavelength telescope designed for very wide field observing. Construction is expected to be completed in early 2024 following extensive delays due to Covid-19. FYST will be used for several large-area surveys with a mapping speed unchallenged by any current or near-future facilities in the 150 to 1500 GHz telluric window. With FYST, we will be poised to make new discoveries and grow our emerging leadership in key areas of observational cosmology and fundamental physics as well as studies of the magnetic structure of our Milky Way galaxy. The rapid cadence surveys that were science goals since the start of this project will also permit a new, exciting, and unique science goal: a search for rapid submillimeter-wave transients.
The Canadian Team for CCAT-prime is led by WCA member Mike Fich and includes researchers at twelve other Canadian universities. All of the Canadian funding proposals have been successful: the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) approved an Innovation Fund 2020 grant to support CCAT-prime and the Provinces of Ontario, Alberta, and BC have provided additional funds to match the CFI funding for a total of $9.4M. Approximately 2/3 of these funds are being used for construction at the site of the observatory including roads, power, buildings, and the assembly of FYST itself. Other major expenses include the central camera module for the main FYST instrument (Prime-Cam) and software both for the observatory and for Prime-Cam data reduction. Work to be done by WCA members includes project management, optics design work and commissioning of the telescope and the Prime-Cam instrument.