China’s wide field survey telescope (WFST) has completed the testing of its charge-coupled device and primary-focus system, the Science and Technology
As a new-generation survey telescope, the WFST has a diameter of 2.5 meters, which can provide a large field of view with high precision and broadband for sky survey, according to the newspaper. Its optical design is a primary-focus system, and its camera is a mosaic charge-coupled device camera for scientific imaging.
The primary-focus camera is one of the key components of the telescope. The imaging detector of the camera is composed of nine CCD290-99 chips, according to the research article published in the Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments and Systems.
The researchers from the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Science and Technology of China designed a verification platform to test the chips on the camera.
Included in the test platform are a light source system, charge-coupled device controller, vacuum Dewar, and refrigerator for cooling the charge-coupled device.
The results showed that the design of the charge-coupled device controller meets the scientific imaging requirements for the WFST camera.
The WFST is expected to improve the country’s capability in astronomical image observation and survey, as well as the large-scale deep temporal survey of the Northern Hemisphere.
Construction of the Wide Field Survey Telescope (WFST), an optical instrument measuring 2.5 meters in diameter, has already started in Lenghu Town, which has an average altitude of approximately 4,200 meters. The town is known as China’s “Mars Camp” due to its eerily eroded desert landscape that resembles the surface of the red planet.
With an investment of 200 million yuan (about 31 million U.S. dollars), the telescope project was launched in 2017 by several research institutions including the University of Science China’s survey and Technology of China and the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Once completed, it will be able to survey the whole northern sky once every three nights.
“The WFST will become the most powerful sky survey telescope in the Northern Hemisphere,” said Kong Xu, the project’s chief designer and a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China, at the project launch ceremony
Source: This news is originally published by cgtn