The Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (AtLAST) represents the next generation in submillimeter astronomy, covering wavelengths from 0.3 to 10mm. The project is funded through the European Commission’s Horizon Europe funding program. It aims to cover various astronomical topics, including star formation, environmental influence on different structures, and time variability across astrophysical sources.

Research outputs from the Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope are published as part of the AtLAST Design Study Collection on Open Research Europe. Dr. Mark Booth, a researcher at the UK Astronomy Technology Centre in Edinburgh, UK, is one of the Advisors of the collection. Read on to discover more about his work, the AtLAST Design Study Collection and the project’s collaboration with Open Research Europe.

Please describe your specific area of research and how it relates to your collection.

My role in the consortium designing AtLAST involves coordinating the science working groups. These science working groups cover topics from the fundamental nature of our Universe to the activity of our Sun. Through these working groups, we summarised the key research questions in eight key fields of sub-millimetre astronomy. We provided cases for how a new large single-dish telescope observing at sub-millimetre wavelengths could address these fundamental questions. This serves the purpose of demonstrating the scientific advances that will be made by this new facility and defining the requirements of the telescope, instrumentation and operations. The result of this effort was the set of case studies that make up this collection.

In my research, I study debris discs. These are the discs of asteroids, comets and dust surrounding other stars, similar to the asteroid and Kuiper belts surrounding our Sun. I study the structure of these discs to understand the history of the planetary systems they reside within, characterise any planets in the system and infer the location of undetected planets. Currently, the study of these discs focuses on discs much brighter than our Kuiper belt. With AtLAST, we will have the possibility to detect discs as faint as our Kuiper belt, allowing us to understand better the similarities and differences between our solar system and nearby planetary systems.

What are the biggest challenges of being a researcher in your field?

One of the biggest challenges to working on a large facility project, such as AtLAST, is the communication challenge posed by the project’s interdisciplinary nature. Amongst the science working groups, we have a wide range of experts covering topics including near-Earth asteroids, the magnetic field of the Milky Way, and the large-scale structure of the Universe. Amongst the rest of the consortium, we have scientists and engineers working on the telescope’s design, determining the best site for it and figuring out how to power it sustainably.

Having spent my career focussed on a narrow sub-field of astronomy, taking on a role that involved summarising the wide variety of science that we hope to achieve with this telescope and then communicating the requirements that this places on the instrumentation, telescope design and telescope operations has been both challenging and highly educational. This interdisciplinarity is also one of the project’s key strengths, ensuring we match the astronomers’ desires with the engineers’ realistic designs.

What questions does the AtLAST study design Collection aim to address? 

The strength of AtLAST is in science, where a large field of view, highly multiplexed instrumentation, and sensitivity to faint large-scale structures are important. The key science questions that motivate this telescope include:

• Where is all the gas and dust? From current observatories, we know a lot about the brightest sources. With AtLAST’s high sensitivity to faint signals on large scales, we will probe not just the tip of the iceberg but more typical populations of celestial objects and look back over 90% of the age of the Universe.

• How do structures interact with their environments? With instrumentation capable of high spectral resolution and polarisation measurements, AtLAST will quantify the chemistry, disentangle the dynamics and measure the magnetic fields of our own and distant galaxies.
  
• What does the time-varying sub-mm sky look like? The combination of high sensitivity and a large field of view will open up the field of transient and variability studies at sub-mm wavelengths. This will enable the study of a wide range of astrophysical sources from the Solar corona to active galactic nuclei.

What aspects of open science are particularly beneficial to your field of research?

Astronomy has long embraced many aspects of open science, recognising its importance for scientific advancements. Long before open access journals became the norm, it was common for astronomers to share their published research in open access repositories to ensure that other researchers from around the world could easily access them and build upon their work. This also encourages a diverse community of researchers, including those from countries with limited resources for science. Data from nationally- and internationally-run telescopes is made publicly available after a limited proprietary time. This enables reproducibility of results and maximises the scientific return of the telescope by ensuring the data is available for answering scientific questions beyond those envisaged by the group that proposed the observations. Through all this and more, open science ensures efficiency in the scientific process by encouraging transparency and cutting out barriers to progress.

Are there any key challenges when it comes to participating in open science that are specific to your research area? 

The main challenge is common in many research areas. Now that journals have embraced open access models, the funding for the journals has typically switched from a ‘reader pays’ to a ‘researcher pays’ model. This puts extra pressure on researchers to find the funds necessary to publish their research, which is something that needs to be addressed by the funding agencies. Open Research Europe provides a good model for this through their direct collaboration with the European Commission, allowing researchers funded by the European Commission to focus on publishing their research without worrying about the cost.

Learn more about the AtLAST Design Study Collection and the benefits of publishing with Open Research Europe.