Astronomy

”The Lijiang Telescope is state of the art and can deliver both photographic and spectroscopic images from within both the visible and the invisible spectral region,” Li Yan explains. With a diameter of 2.45 meters, the mirror substrate is more than double the size of the 1-meter telescopes that are predominant in China.

This sky scout was designed and built by the British company Telescope Technologies Limited (TTL) at a cost of around three million euros and now ranks as the world’s largest fully automatic robotic telescope. It is unique as it is not only capable of following objects very closely on its own for longer periods of time, but can also be operated remotely and is therefore capable of reacting immediately to capture sudden, surprising cosmic events, such as exploding stars. With the help of their new viewing device, researchers are going to determine the age of cosmic structures and to discover new planets, stars and galaxies.

The Lijiang Telescope is the first of seven national astronomy programs that China is currently pursuing. With the help of the Large Sky Area Multi-Objects Fiber Spectroscopy Telescope (LAMOST) that will go into operation early next year at the Xinglong Observatory in the Hebei Province in the north of China, the People’s Republic is seeking to join the world’s elite in the field of astrophysics. SCHOTT has already supplied forty hexagonal mirror substrates with one meter in the diagonals made from Zerodur® glass ceramic for this device. The LAMOST Telescope is designed to provide up to 4,000 spectra of stars simultaneously.