Ten years from the Antarctic Sub-millimeter Telescope and Remote Observatory

Beginning with the winter season of 1995 and for the next ten years, the Antarctic Sub-mm Telescope and Remote Observatory (AST/RO, Stark et al. 1997; Stark et al. 2001; http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/ASTRO/), a 1.7m diameter, offset Gregorian telescope located at an altitude of 2847m at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station collected sub-mm and Terahertz data in the 1.3mm to 200μm wavelength bands. From its location just a few hundred meters away from the geophysical South Pole, AST/RO was the first sub-mm telescope to over-winter on the polar plateau, a location uniquely suited to high quality sub-mm observations due its very low humidity, high atmospheric stability and thin troposphere (Chamberlin et al. 1997).