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Measuring The Cosmos

Simons Observatory

Telescope Details

Website

Location

Atacama Desert in Chile

Purpose

This groundbreaking observatory will study how the universe began, what it is made of and how it evolved to its current state. The project is investigating the cosmic microwave background (CMB) — the most ancient light in the universe — to better understand the physics of the Big Bang, the nature of dark energy and dark matter, the properties of neutrinos and structure formation in the universe.

The Simons Observatory is the world’s most advanced instrument to study the cosmic microwave background. It will measure the oldest light in the universe with unsurpassed sensitivity and provide the clearest picture to date of the early universe, its evolution over cosmic time and its composition, including both dark matter and dark energy.

NIST’s role

Over seven years, NIST researchers built and delivered 39 detector arrays with a total of more than 70,000 superconducting sensors, demonstrating the ability to produce these sensors reliably and at scale. The team also designed a SQUID multiplexer that reads out 1,000 detectors in one channel, a huge improvement in efficiency that will help keep the sensors cold, making their measurements more accurate.

The NIST team earned a Department of Commerce Gold Medal for this work.

Significant discoveries and current status

This observatory includes four small-aperture telescopes and one large-aperture telescope. As of 2025, the telescopes are observing.

Other interesting facts

This is the most ambitious of all CMB experiments to date in terms of funding levels and sheer numbers of participants, telescopes, sensors and cosmological questions to be studied.

Supported by

Simons Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University and University of Michigan