Facility Projects

ARC scientists and engineers are involved in the design and development of astronomical facilities, on the ground and in space. This work is in partnership with NRC-Herzberg, the Canadian Space Agency, and Canadian industries.

Astronomical Facilities

CASTOR

A project of the Canada Space Agency (CSA), the Cosmological Advanced Survey Telescope for Optical and UV Research (CASTOR) is a UV/optical (0.15–0.55 μm) satellite telescope that would provide ultra-deep, high-angular resolution imaging.

Contact : Patrick Côté

Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer

The Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE) is a proposed 11.25m telescope, designed to excel at multi-object spectroscopy, with capabilities to simultaneously observe 4000 objects.

Contact: Scott Roberts, Kim Venn , Alan McConnachie, Patrick Côté

Next Generation Very Large Array

The Next Generation Very Large Array (ngVLA) is a proposed future radio interferometer designed to succeed the Jansky VLA and VLBA, providing vastly superior sensitivity and angular resolution at centimeter wavelengths to probe key questions from planet formation to cosmology.

Canadian Square Kilometre Array Regional Centre

Hosted at UVic, the Canadian Square Kilometre Array Regional Centre (CanSRC) will serve as the sole regional processing hub in the Americas for the revolutionary SKA telescope, which will produce 600 petabytes of astronomical data annually. The CanSRC leverages local expertise from UVic's Astronomy Research Centre and collaborates with key Canadian organizations including the National Research Council's Canadian Astronomy Data Centre, the Digital Research Alliance of Canada, CANARIE, and UVic's Arbutus cloud platform.

Composite Mirrors

Research into composite mirrors is being carried out at DRAO.

Contact: Gordon Lacey, Michael Rupen