Toward a 25-Meter Submillimeter Telescope

The atmospheric transmission available in the Atacama desert, and the fine surface accuracy requirement should thus allow for good performance well into the submm. The wide field of view advantage is to be provided by large format submillimeter arrays, which are becoming increasingly available at both long and short submm wavelengths. Indeed imaging arrays with nearly 104 elements are already being planned for the JCMT. Novel spectrometer designs are now also beginning to enable broadband spectroscopy of distant galaxies as well. Thus all of the technical issues appear surmountable with present technologies, opening the way to a major advances with a 25 m submm telescope.