CaltechAUTHORS
Published June 2025 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Cryoscope: A Cryogenic Infrared Survey Telescope in Antarctica

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 2. ROR icon Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur
  • 3. ROR icon Australian National University
  • 4. ROR icon UNSW Sydney
  • 5. ROR icon University of Birmingham
  • 6. ROR icon National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand
  • 7. ROR icon Laboratoire de Physique des 2 Infinis Irène Joliot-Curie
  • 8. ROR icon Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • 9. Astrophysics Science Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Mail Code 661, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA
  • 10. ROR icon Swinburne University of Technology
  • 11. ROR icon Australian Research Council
  • 12. ROR icon Columbia University
  • 13. Center for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute, 162 5th Ave., New York, NY 10010, USA
  • 14. ROR icon École Normale Supérieure - PSL
  • 15. ROR icon Center for Particle Physics of Marseilles
  • 16. ROR icon Rochester Institute of Technology
  • 17. ROR icon Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
  • 18. ROR icon European Space Research and Technology Centre
  • 19. ROR icon University of Sydney
  • 20. ROR icon University of Bologna
  • 21. ROR icon Infrared Processing and Analysis Center
  • 22. ROR icon NOIRLab
  • 23. ROR icon University of California, Santa Barbara
  • 24. ROR icon National Institute for Astrophysics
  • 25. ROR icon French National Centre for Scientific Research
  • 26. ROR icon University of Maryland, College Park
  • 27. ROR icon University of Western Australia

Abstract

We present Cryoscope, a new 50 deg2 field-of-view, 1.2 m aperture, Kdark survey telescope to be located at Dome C, Antarctica. Cryoscope has an innovative optical–thermal design wherein the entire telescope is cryogenically cooled. Cryoscope also explores new detector technology to cost-effectively tile the full focal plane. Leveraging the dark Antarctic sky and minimizing telescope thermal emission, Cryoscope achieves unprecedented deep, wide, fast, and red observations, matching and exceeding volumetric survey speeds from the Ultraviolet Explorer, Vera Rubin Observatory, Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, SPHEREx, and NEO Surveyor. By providing coverage beyond wavelengths of 2 μm, we aim to create the most comprehensive dynamic movie of the most obscured reaches of the Universe. Cryoscope will be a dedicated discovery engine for electromagnetic emission from coalescing compact binaries, Earth-like exoplanets orbiting cold stars, and multiple facets of time-domain, stellar, and solar system science. In this paper, we describe the scientific drivers and technical innovations for this new discovery engine operating in the Kdark passband, why we choose to deploy it in Antarctica, and the status of a fifth-scale prototype designed as a Pathfinder to retire technological risks prior to full-scale implementation. We plan to deploy the Cryoscope Pathfinder to Dome C in 2026 December and the full-scale telescope by 2030.

Copyright and License

© 2025. The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd on behalf of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP). Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.

Acknowledgement

The Cryoscope Pathfinder project is supported by Schmidt Sciences (12540478). We also acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation (ATI 2010041, RAPID 2449325) and the Mount Cuba Astronomical Foundation (12540465). We acknowledge support for detector development from NSF (AST 1509716) and NASA (NNX13AH70G). We thank IPEV for supporting our on-site operations in Concordia, Antarctica.

Software References

astropy (Astropy Collaboration et al. 2013, 2018, 2022), matplotlib (Hunter 2007), numpy (Harris et al. 2020), pandas (The pandas development Team 2024), scipy (Virtanen et al. 2020), sncosmo (Barbary et al. 2025), synphot (STScI Development Team 2018).

Files

Kasliwal_2025_PASP_137_065001.pdf

Files (9.5 MB)

Name Size Download all
md5:f199f71247ca4f255c9ce0005ca3c6ab
9.5 MB Preview Download

Additional details

Additional titles

Alternative title
Cryoscope: A Cryogenic Infrared Survey Telescope

Related works

Is new version of
Discussion Paper: arXiv:2502.06950 (arXiv)

Funding

Schmidt Sciences
12540478
National Science Foundation
ATI-2010041
Mount Cuba Astronomical Foundation
12540465
National Science Foundation
AST-1509716
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NNX13AH70G

Dates

Accepted
2025-03-24
Available
2025-06-19
Published online

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Astronomy Department, Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC), Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy (PMA)
Publication Status
Published