Magazine Fall 2023 Elevated Research
Students Work at Chilean Telescopes
At 17,000 feet in Chile鈥檚 Atacama Desert, Jen Ito, assistant professor of physics, and two of her research students worked on the Simons Array, a set of three telescopes that study the cosmic microwave background. Michael Lew 鈥24 and Jacob Nelson 鈥24 were the first undergraduates in more than a decade to work on the array, part of an experiment to learn more about the universe鈥檚 early history.
Each telescope houses a camera, called a cryogenic receiver, with internal temperatures as low as a fraction of a degree above absolute zero (-459 掳F).
Ito, who worked on the telescopes as a graduate student at UC San Diego, has continued to collaborate with her colleagues to calibrate and prepare the telescopes for scientific observations since coming to 四虎影院 in fall 2022.
She spoke about 鈥淎steroids and Exoplanets鈥 in a 四虎影院 Downtown lecture in October.