Shining light on the sun

Within the next decade, China will observe the sun with the world’s largest solar telescope and set up its first overseas observatory in Antarctica.

Since 2010, the team for the Chinese Giant Solar Telescope (CGST), one of the next-generation groundbased solar telescopes, has been doing a scheduled four-year site survey for solar observations in western China.

The CGST project is expected to be approved and start in 2016, according to Deng Yuanyong, director of Huairou Solar Observing Station of the National Astronomical Observatories, under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The project is expected to be a leader in the field of solar observation for 20 years.

Deng says the CGST will surpass the capabilities of the large optical telescopes currently being planned by other countries, such as the US Advanced Technology Solar Telescope, which is going to be installed in Hawaii, and the European Solar Telescope. Both have a design diameter of 4 meters.

“As the CGST is still in its very early stage, we are looking forward to more international collaboration,” Deng says in an interview with Xinhua News Agency.

Some large-scale astronomy projects in China, including the Large Sky Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope, completed in 2008, in Xinglong, Hebei province; and the 500-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope, to be completed in 2016 in Pingtang county in Guizhou province, will provide experience for the building of CGST.

According to Wang Lifan, a researcher with the Purple Mountain Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences, China is planning to set up an observatory in Antarctica, China’s first overseas observatory.

If approved and included in the 12th Five-Year Plan, the observatory should go into operation by 2020, Wang tells China Daily at the 28th International Astronomical Assembly, held in Beijing in August.

“Antarctica has the best conditions on Earth for astronomical observation, as it has very flat ground, a transparent atmosphere and little turbulence. The groundbased telescopes here will bring us precious information from the universe,” says Wang, also the director of the Chinese Center for Antarctic Astronomy.

“Some countries like the US, France and Italy have set up telescopes in Antarctic, which has obtained important data and discoveries,” says Chen Xuelei, a researcher with National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Chinese astronomers installed the first of three Antarctic Survey Telescopes (AST3-1) at Dome Argus, or “Dome A”, located at the highest elevation on the Antarctic continent, at the beginning of 2012.

The AST3-1 is China’s first domestically produced automatic unmanned telescope, capable of conducting surveys of supernova and other extra-solar bodies. It’s 4.5 meters tall, making it the largest optical telescope in Antarctica.

The second AST3 will be installed in Antarctica between late 2013 and early 2014, while the third one will be installed between late 2014 and early 2015.

Wang says more than 50 Chinese scientists will help construct the observatory. It will be a robotic remote-control observatory without people stationed there.

Its mission is expected to include research on supernovas and dark energy, observing cosmic microwave backgrounds and searching for extra-solar planets suitable for life

“We will search through a wide range of main sequence stars, mainly sun-like stars, and then look for planets within a suitable distance around them. Stars that are smaller and darker than the sun, such as dwarfs, are also in our survey scope,” he says.

Scientists have been trying to find signs of life in the universe by looking for habitable planets first. “We know too little about life. Maybe there are new forms of life that do not need exactly the same environment as we have on Earth. Life can survive in very harsh environments,” Wang says.

“These telescopes are expected to help us find at least 100 sun-like stars. We will work with Australian scientists to further study the movement of the stars to calculate their size.”

Chinese astronomy dates back further than anywhere else in the world. Star names have been found on oracle bones unearthed at Anyang in Henan province, dating back to the mid-Shang Dynasty in the 14th century BC.

Observing the sky, making instruments and calendars, were major contributions of ancient Chinese astronomers and astrologers. This includes the earliest recording of the appearance of Halley’s Comet in 240 BC and the famous Dunhuang Star Map, made by astronomers in the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907), which is the world’s oldest complete preserved star atlas.

Since the late 16th century, Western astronomy, including the telescope, was introduced to China, but the Copernican view of the sun at the center of the universe was not accepted in mainstream China until the early 19th century.

In 1913, when an Asia-wide observatories meeting was held in Japan, the observatory that represented China was Xujiahui Observatory in Shanghai, which was built and financed by the French Catholic Church in 1872.

On Oct 30, 1922, which later became National Astronomy Day, the Chinese Astronomy Society was founded at Beijing Ancient Observatory and Gao Lu was elected as its first president.

In 1934, the Purple Mountain Observatory was built in Nanjing, Jiangsu province.

After the founding of New China in 1949, astronomy was fasttracked and in 1957, Zhang Yuzhe, then director of the Purple Mountain Observatory and regarded as the father of modern Chinese astronomy, was the first Chinese person to discover an asteroid.