On September 5th, the first light ceremony of the Tianyu Telescope was held at the Lenghu Astronomical Observation and Research Base in Qinghai Province. Previously, the Tianyu Telescope located at the base successfully obtained the first light image, capturing over a million stars in the Cygnus North American Nebula, Pelican Nebula, and surrounding Milky Way in one exposure, marking the completion of the telescope and entering the scientific observation stage.
The Tianyu Telescope is the first 1-meter telescope with large field sub second sampling in China, and also the pilot telescope of JUST (Shanghai Jiaotong University Spectral Telescope). The project was established in 2022, led by Li Zhengdao Institute of Shanghai Jiaotong University, and developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Shanghai Astronomical Observatory. The name "Tianyu" comes from Mr. Li Zhengdao's philosophy of "using the language of heaven to understand the way of things". By listening to the language of the stars, one can understand the truth hidden behind all things.
The first light image showcases Tianyu's "expertise": its 1-meter aperture main mirror, combined with an internationally advanced large target scientific camera, can cover nearly 9 square degrees of the sky in a single shot, equivalent to the area of more than 40 full moons; The first light image is composed of 200 0.3 second exposure images stacked together, which can detect celestial bodies that are about a million times darker than the human eye's limit.
Feng Fabo, the leader of the Tianyu Project and associate professor at the Li Zhengdao Research Institute of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, introduced that the Tianyu Telescope will conduct continuous photometric monitoring of billions of celestial bodies, capturing subtle changes in brightness and discovering exoplanets, various variables, supernovae, and small celestial bodies in the solar system.
It is reported that the Tianyu Telescope and the under construction 4-meter spectral telescope JUST are located at the Qinghai Lenghu Astronomical Observation and Research Base, and are operated by the JUST team of the Li Zhengdao Research Institute. Professor Yang Xiaohu, the project leader of JUST and deputy director of the Li Zhengdao Research Institute at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, introduced that the Tianyu Telescope not only undertakes the scientific task of time domain target discovery, but also conducts engineering pre research for JUST in observation operation and maintenance, automatic triggering of transient sources, and multi-target task scheduling, laying the software and hardware foundation for JUST to achieve first light and time domain follow-up spectral observation in 2027. (Outlook New Era)