On May 24th to Many 25th 2016, The 562nd Xiangshan Science Conference on development strategy on science and technology for Chinese ground-based large aperture optical/infrared telescope (LOT), hosted by National Astronomical Observatories (NAO)/Nanjing Institute of Astronomical Optics and Technology (NIAOT), Chinese Academy of Sciences, was held successfully in Nanjing.
About 60 experts from most astronomical units around the country strongly urged that the Chinese Large Optical/infrared telescope project should be initiated and constructed as soon as possible during the 13th five-year plan.
Prof. Jun Yan from NAO, Prof. Xiangqun Cui from NIAOT, Prof. Gang Zhao from NAO, Prof. Yongtian Zhu from NIAOT, Prof. Jinming Bai from Yunnan Observatory and Prof. Jilin Zhou from Nanjing University all serve as the Executive Chairman of the conference, where the LOT scientific requirements, overall technical scheme, key technologies and site etc are deeply discussed.
The experts agreed that:
1) It is very meaningful and important to build the Chinese 12m LOT. During the almost ten years after LOT construction, LOT will be the largest optical telescope in the world, and it will help provide the most competitive and powerful observation platform for many major scientific frontier questions in the 21th century such as the precise nature of dark energy, first generation of stars, early universe and cross-identification multi-waveband properties in celestial objects, and provide strategic opportunities for Chinese recent and long-term astronomical development.
2) LOT can realize fine astrometry and survey by adopting an overall optical design with Chinese independent innovation and many new technologies with intellectual property rights, such as the famous Su-Yu-Zhou (SYZ) relay optical system, prism atmospheric dispersion compensation system, two layer Nasmyth focal platforms and stress polishing for aspheric sub-mirrors. LOT will greatly promote the development of the new technologies for the Chinese astronomical optics and.
3) China has accumulated a lot of experience on researching and operation of large optical astronomical observation facility. During the successful construction of LAMOST and pre-research of large aperture telescope and its key technologies, China has already developed and grasped the new technologies for large optical telescope at the international frontier level, trained the corresponding talent team, had capability and conditions to build large aperture optical/infrared telescope.
The participating experts have gained wide recognition, and strongly appealed to grasp the recent major scientific opportunity of international astronomy and physics science to build the Chinese 12m optical/infrared telescope as early as possible during the 13th five-year period, to seize the intiative of astronomical frontier research to achieve a series of early important breakthroughs and make Chinese astronomy quickly reach among the world's advanced level.
Fig.1 Conference venue
Fig.2 The model of the Chinese 12m optical/infrared telescope (LOT)
