The Viper telescope was a 2-metre telescope used to observe the submillimetre band from the

South Pole The South Pole, also known as the Geographic South Pole or Terrestrial South Pole, is the point in the Southern Hemisphere where the Earth's rotation, Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True South Pole to distinguish ...

. This telescope was located at the Center for Astrophysical Research, also known as (CARA), in the Amundsen-Scott station in

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean), it contains the geographic South Pole. ...

. The project was operated by many scientists; the team leader, Dr. Jeffrey Peterson, is a

Carnegie Mellon Carnegie may refer to: People *Carnegie (surname), including a list of people with the name **Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist * Clan Carnegie, a lowland Scottish clan Institutions Named for Andrew Carnegie * ...

astrophysicist. Viper was mainly used to view

Cosmic microwave background The cosmic microwave background (CMB, CMBR), or relic radiation, is microwave radiation that fills all space in the observable universe. With a standard optical telescope, the background space between stars and galaxies is almost completely dar ...

. First operational in 1998, the

telescope A telescope is a device used to observe distant objects by their emission, Absorption (electromagnetic radiation), absorption, or Reflection (physics), reflection of electromagnetic radiation. Originally, it was an optical instrument using len ...

was used to help scientists prove or disprove the

Big Crunch The Big Crunch is a hypothetical scenario for the ultimate fate of the universe, in which the expansion of the universe eventually reverses and the universe recollapses, ultimately causing the cosmic scale factor to reach absolute zero, an eve ...

theory. The telescope was at the time also one of the most powerful of its kind. Previous cosmic background telescopes were smaller and less sensitive. It was decommissioned in 2005.

References

External links

National Science FoundationHarvard
Cosmic microwave background experiments Interferometric telescopes {{telescope-stub