A large single-aperture telescope for submillimeter astronomy

The large submillimeter telescope (LST) is a proposed wide-field, 30m-class telescope operating from a ground-based site in the relatively unexplored 0.2 - 1mm waveband. The telescope will be equipped with imaging and spectroscopic instrumentation to allow astronomers to probe the earliest evolutionary stages of galaxies, stars and planets. It is intended to operate the telescope in the 200 mu m atmospheric window, giving access to unique science; probing the peak emission from the cosmic far-IR/submm background and proto-stellar cores. The wide field-of-view and superb image fidelity will be perfect for large-scale surveys of the sky, such as entire giant molecular clouds and of fields of dusty ga(1)laxies at early epochs. It will therefore be an ideal complement to new generation interferometers (such as ALMA). In this paper we present an update on the science case and outline initial designs for both the telescope and instrumentation.