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China’s CSST: A Breakthrough in Cosmology with Xuntian Telescope

SPACE — China is preparing a major project in the space sector. A monumental telescope, the Chinese Survey Space Telescope (CSST) will be launched into space on a Long March 5B rocket next year.

CSST, also called Xuntian (sky survey), is the size of a bus with a main mirror two meters (6.6 feet) in diameter. CSST will work in the same orbit as the Tiangong space station, but they are far apart.

Xuntian was designed to outperform NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Deputy director of the China Manned Space Agency, Lin Xiqiang, said the Xuntian observatory is expected to make a breakthrough in cosmology. “(explains) Dark matter and energy, the Milky Way galaxy and other neighboring galaxies, the formation and evolution of stars, and exoplanets,” he said.

Lin said the high-resolution telescope with a 2.5 billion pixel main camera would carry out in-depth surveys over an area of ​​17,500 square degrees. Then, make subtle observations of various types of celestial bodies.

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Field of View

According to Lin, Xuntian is capable of observing the universe in high definition, which has roughly the same spatial resolution as the Hubble Telescope. However, Xuntian has a field of view 300 times larger than Hubble.

The field of view is the area of ​​the sky that can be seen by a telescope at one time. In an interview last year with the Xinhua news agency, Li Ran, a project scientist with CSST’s Scientific Data Reduction System, used the analogy of imaging a flock of sheep to demonstrate CSST’s capabilities.

“Hubble might see one sheep, but CSST will see thousands of sheep, all at the same resolution,” Li said.

“CSST is designed to dock periodically at the space station for maintenance and upgrades by astronauts at Tiangong,” Lin said.

High technology

Zhou Jianping, chief designer of China’s manned space program, also praised Xuntian’s capabilities and usefulness. “Xuntian Telescope has become the most important scientific project since the launch of our country’s space station program,” Jianping said in an interview with China Central Television (CCTV).

“This is a scientific facility that is eagerly awaited by the Chinese astronomy community, and a scientific facility that represents high technology in astronomy,” Zhou said.

According to Zhou, the telescope is also the most advanced in its ability to produce images in the ultraviolet spectrum. In this field, he said, Xuntian outperforms all ongoing telescope research projects in the world.

2023-10-04 19:51:00
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