Telescope obtains data on 7 million stars
A Chinese telescope has collected data on more than 7 million stars, exceeding the sum of all existing spectroscopic data on stars and making it the world’s largest database in the field.
The Guo Shoujing telescope, named after a 13th-century Chinese astronomer, is operated by the National Astronomical Observatories under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), which released the findings.
The telescope has been in use since 2012. It is the world’s first large-area telescope that can observe the spectra of 4,000 stars at a time.
“Data are paramount for astronomical studies,” said Liu Chao, a fellow researcher with the national observatories.
In 2014, scientists used the telescope to discover a hypervelocity star, which are stars that can travel at high speeds to escape the gravity of a galaxy.