BEIJING, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- The Tianyu Telescope, located in Lenghu, northwest China's Qinghai Province, has successfully captured an image of the North America Nebula and the Pelican Nebula in the constellation Cygnus, along with more than one million surrounding stars in the Milky Way in a single exposure.
This feat signals the telescope's transition to the scientific observation stage, according to People's Daily on Tuesday.
Initiated in 2022 and led by the Tsung-Dao Lee Institute (TDLI) of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, with the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences responsible for its development, the telescope is expected to begin formal scientific survey operations in October 2026.
The Tianyu Telescope covers a sky area of nearly nine square degrees in a single exposure, equivalent to more than 40 full moons.
Many violent events in the universe, such as stellar explosions and gravitational-wave flashes from neutron star mergers, often fade away within seconds to minutes. When space telescopes or gravitational-wave detectors send out alerts, the Tianyu Telescope can rapidly slew toward the target and "rewind" the sky area under its real-time monitoring, restoring the celestial view from seconds before the burst, said the report.
The Tianyu Telescope will carry out sustained photometric monitoring of hundreds of millions of celestial objects, capturing subtle variations in their brightness to discover exoplanets, various types of variable stars, supernovae and small bodies within the solar system, Feng Fabo, an associate professor at the TDLI and project director of the Tianyu Telescope, was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
The Tianyu project has already attracted research teams from Britain, Belgium and Chile, and its data will be coordinated with multiple survey projects both at home and abroad.
Moving forward, the Tianyu Telescope will undergo a phased transition from commissioning observations to stable operations, and from remote-controlled to fully-automated observing modes. ■
