The Educational Adaptive-optics Solar Telescope at the Shanghai Astronomy Museum

The Educational Adaptive-optics Solar Telescope(EAST)at the Shanghai Astronomy Museum has been running routine astronomical observations since 2021.It is a 65-cm-aperture Gregorian solar telescope for scientific education,outreach,and research.The telescope system is designed in an“open”format so that the solar tower architecture can be integrated with it,and visitors can watch the observations live from inside the tower.Equipped with adaptive optics,a high-resolution imaging system,and an integral field unit spectro-imaging system,this telescope can obtain high-resolution solar images in the TiO and Hαbands,and perform spectral image reconstruction using 400 optical fibers at selected wavelengths.It can be used not only in public education and scientific outreach but also in solar physics research.

The Science of Radio Astronomy: An Investigation of Crab Nebula

The science of radio astronomy focuses on the observation and study of celestial objects by reading their radio waves. The 5 meter radio-telescope is able to observe different radio sources using a C-band LNB. This research was essentially focused on Crab Nebula, also known as Taurus A. The study led to interesting observations, which were validated numerically using various scientific computing software. The radio waves emitted by Taurus A are readable by the RTL-SDR, a software defined radio receiver. This device is capable of reading radio frequencies in the range of 0.5 MHZ to 1700 MHZ.

China’s Space Astronomy and Solar Physics in 2011—2012

In the first part of this paper,we describe briefly the mid and long-term plan of Chinese space astronomy,its preliminary study program,the current status of satellite missions undertaken, and the current status of astronomy experiments in China's manned space flight program.In the second part,the recent research progress made in the fields of solar physics is summarized briefly, including solar vector magnetic field,solar flares,CME and filaments,solar radio and nonthermal processes,EUV waves,MHD waves and coronal waves,solar model and helioseismology,solar wind and behavior of solar cycle.

Space Astronomy in China: 2002-2004

More and more proposals, or potential projects have been proposed in recent two years. We try to briefly outline these new proposals, although most of them are in fact only in their conception studies. The progress of previously mentioned projects, like Space Solar Telescope (SST), the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (HXMT), as well as newly initiated LUnar Resource Explorer (LUREX), will be introduced elsewhere.

Journey through the birth, growth and maturity of X-ray astronomy

In this biographical account, I recall my scientific journey that began in 1961 when I joined as a Physics Trainee in the BARC Training School and after one year course was admitted in TIFR as a Research Associate. During 1962–1967, I worked on determination of the He^3 /He^4 ratio in cosmic rays using a gas Cerenkov counter and also used a scintillation + solid Cerenkov detector to measure flux of protons and helium nuclei in primary cosmic rays. I also developed a large area scintillation-Cerenkov detector with a spark chamber between them for measuring charge composition of primary cosmic rays. I joined the X-ray astronomy programme in 1967 initiated by Prof. B. V. Sreekantan and played a leading role in developing a balloon borne hard X-ray instrument for studying time variability and energy spectra of cosmic X-ray sources. We carried out a series of balloon experiments and studied temporal intensity variation and energy spectra of X-ray objects like Sco X-1, Cyg X-1, etc. Results on rapid intensity changes and spectra appeared in a series of publications based on which I obtained a Ph.D. degree in 1972. Immediately afterwards, I joined Prof. Gordon Garmire at Caltech as a Research Fellow (a post-doctoral position) to work with him on the low energy component of HEAO A-2 experiment. The instrument was developed and successfully realised. Working on this satellite experiment was a thrilling experience which exposed me to the technical complexities of space instruments. The HEAO-1 satellite was launched in 1978. During 1978–1979, Guenter Riegler and I, working at JPL, reported detection of intense soft X-rays from several classes of extragalactic and Galactic objects like new BL Lacs, a new AM Her binary, coronal X-rays from active stars, etc. After returning to TIFR, I developed a rocket experiment with K. P. Singh to map the spatial and spectral distribution of the Soft Diffuse X-ray Background. At the same time, I also designed 15 cm deep Xenon filled Proportional Counters (XPCs) of ~ 2500 cm^2 area for balloon experiments which were done during 1983–1990 and produced new results on several X-ray binaries. During this period I also developed a proportional counter (PC) based satellite instrument and submitted a proposal jointly with the astronomy group at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) for an Indian X-ray Astronomy Experiment (IXAE). After success of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), the IXAE instrument was included on the top deck of the IRS-P3 satellite that was launched in March 1996. Despite the severe limitation of a polar orbit, the IXAE observed a good number of X-ray binaries and produced interesting results, with the most notable being quasi-regular bursts from a new transient, GRS 1915+105, which turned out to be an enigmatic black hole source. Following success of the IXAE, a proposal for an ambitious multiwavelength astronomy satellite, named ASTROSAT, with broad spectral coverage in the optical, NUV, FUV, soft X-ray and hard X-ray by a suite of instruments, was submitted to ISRO and finally approved by the Govt. of India in 2004. Over the next 10 years, the development and fabrication of the five ASTROSAT instruments were accomplished and a PSLV launch on Sept. 28, 2015 placed ASTROSAT in a 650 km circular orbit with 6 degree inclination. The ASTROSAT instruments have been performing well for ~4 years and have observed more than 500 cosmic sources. Results from ASTROSAT have appeared in a large number of journal publications. Successful realization and performance of ASTROSAT marks culmination of my research career. I formally retired as a Senior Professor from TIFR on 2006 April 30 on attaining the age of superannuation. However by agreement with TIFR, ISRO designated me ‘ISRO Chair Professor’, which was later renamed as ISRO Satish Dhawan Professor, and asked me to continue to lead ASTROSAT as PI. At the end of my tenure as ISRO Professor on 2011 April 30, I relinquished the PI position. I am at present affiliated with the MU-DAE Centre of Excellence for Basic Sciences, Mumbai University Campus at Mumbai as an Emeritus Professor.

Space Astronomy in China During 2004 - 2006

For the past two years, some real progress has been made in Chinese Space Astronomy, though we have not launched any missions exclusively belonging to the scope of Astronomy. In order to program the next five years' national plan (2006-2010), the Chinese Space Agency organized a series of authorized evaluations for the future missions. Among more than ten astronomical mission proposals, several were selected to give the green light to continue for their Phase A studies. We try to briefly outline these proposals.

Space Astronomy in China:2008-2010

In 2008 to 2010,the main activities in Chinese space astronomy were focused on:fulfilling the long-term plan of Chinese space astronomy;initiating the long-term plan of Chinese space astronomy;undertaking some astronomical missions set by CNSA in "Development Program of Space Science for 2006-2010".This paper summarizes in brief all these activities.

Space Astronomy in China:2006—2008

In 2006 to 2008,the main activities in Chinese space astronomy focus on:(1) undertaking some missions set by CNSA,like HXMT,SMESE,WSO/UV,SST,KUAFU,and so on;(2) drawing up a long-term plan of Chinese space astronomy.This paper summarizes in brief all these activities.

Characterization of silicon microstrip sensors for space astronomy

Silicon microstrip detectors are widely used in experiments for space astronomy.Before the detector is assembled,extensive characterization of the silicon microstrip sensors is indispensable and challenging.This work electrically evaluates a series of sensor parameters,including the depletion voltage,bias resistance,metal strip resistance,total leakage current,strip leakage current,coupling capacitance,and interstrip capacitance.Two methods are used to accurately measure the strip leakage current,and the test results match each other well.In measuring the coupling capacitance,we extract the correct value based on a SPICE model and two-port network analysis.In addition,the expression of the measured bias resistance is deduced based on the SPICE model.

Reminiscence of my Sixty-five year Voyage in Astronomy

I returned to China from the United Kingdom in 1953, then worked in Purple Mountain Observatory. It was the early days of new China. The elder generation of astronomers was undertaking an effort of ＂repairing broken and filling defect＂ during those post-war years, and started planning and lay- ing the foundation of modern astronomy. Under their leadership, I started a journey of astronomy whose main task was construction. The journey has been full of twists and turns. As a result of the ＂Great Leap Forward＂ in 1958 and the 1966 launch of the decade-long ＂Cultural Revolution＂ period, the situation of construction in astronomy was similar to that in other sciences, suffering bad effects. Not until the ＂Reform and Opening up＂ period after those events was construction able to continue, and various disciplines and international connections began to open. A ＂passage＂ had gradually developed. In this new circumstance, I kept pursuing the pioneers to explore a forward direction. Looking back today, this journey has been three periods of a four generation relay. This article is divided into three sections that describe my research work in these times that I recall： （1） Looking back at the beginning of the return and tracing the footprints of the founders. （2） Recalling my radio astronomy tour. （3） Retrospection and expectation of LAMOST.

IMAGING IN HIGH ENERGY ASTRONOMY

Space research is usually costly, and this restricts participation of developing countries. With traditional techniques one must construct high resolution instrument,more and more complicated and expensive, to obtain high resolution results from space observations. It is a difficult task to make observations with both high sensitivity and high resolution. Applying advanced inversion technique, one can subtract more information from old data in public domain,and, furthermore, conduct high sensitive and high-resolution experiments with low-cost low-resolution instruments. So developing and applying data analysis technique is of great importance for developing countries to do basic space science.In this paper we summarize efforts of Chinese scientists in recent years along this direction on imaging in space high energy astronomy.

Terahertz atmospheric windows for high angular resolution terahertz astronomy from Dome A

Atmospheric transmission from Dome A, Antarctica, presents new possibilities in the field of terahertz astronomy, where space telescopes have been the only observational tools until now. Using atmospheric transmission measurements from Dome A with a Fourier transform spectrometer, transmission spectra and long-term stabilities have been analyzed at 1.461 THz, 3.393 THz, 5.786 THz and 7.1 THz, which show that important atmospheric windows for terahertz astronomy open for a reasonable length of time in the winter season. With large aperture terahertz telescopes and interferometers at Dome A, high angular resolution terahertz observations are foreseen of atomic fine-structure lines from ionized gas and a water ice feature from protoplanetary disks.

The messier objects as a tool in teaching astronomy

The French astronomer Charles Messier (1730- 1817) compiled a catalogue [1] of astronomical objects which reached109 innumber after additions by later astronomers were added. The catalogue contains galaxies, emission nebulae, a supernova remnant, a double star, globular clusters, open clusters, an asterism, a star cloud, and planetary nebulae. While the objective of Messier in compiling the catalogue was to guide comet hunters not to be confused by his objects which he thought looked like comets [2], the Messier Catalogue as it later became known became a standard guide to astronomers for a study of the sky’s “greatest hits” or the best samples of objects which can be observed and studied. This paper explores the value of the Messier Catalogue in the teaching of Astronomy and Earth Science. The range of objects is wide and contains some of the best examples of their type. The teaching method I propose is the actual observations of the objects through a telescope, with the corresponding explanation. Some principles which will be covered through this process are stellar evolution from the birth and death of stars, galaxy types, formation of galaxies, galactic interactions, life in the Universe, cosmology, and our place in the Universe.

pysky: An Application for the Planning of Multi-Target Astronomical Observations

To automate the process of planning and curating multi-target observation sessions, pysky application builds on the astroplan Python package to identify visible objects during an observation window and produce relevant information about those objects in visual and graphical form. The package calculates object visibility based on a provided time window and observing location as well as maximum airmass and limiting magnitude requested by the user. The pysky application images of the target objects with identifying and astrometric data to provide context for the images. In addition, pysky creates polar plots of each object’s horizontal coordinates, and the images and plots are designed to be shown side-by-side. The package also generates an HTML table of the selected target objects with their related data to relay the entire target list as one. The pysky application draws on a variety of Python packages to collect and process data from databases such as JPL Horizons and SIMBAD. Results for a test event were verified by hand using database web interfaces. The pysky application provides a platform for further integration of automated observation planning with websites and apps to enhance multi-target observation sessions.

Space Astronomy

This chapter reports the recent progress on the space astronomy missions of China,including the following missions:currently operating in orbit,e.g.,DAMPE,Insight-HXMT,GECAM,Polar Light,GRID and Lobster-eye X-ray Satellite;approved and under development for launch in the next a couple of years,e.g.,SVOM and EP;planned experiments to be onboard China’s Space Station in the next several years,e.g.,CSST,HERD,POLAR-2,DIXE and Ly RIC;candidate missions that have passed the first round of review of Strategy Priority Program on space science(Ⅲ)of the Chinese Academy of Sciences,e.g.,eXTP,DAMPE-2,Earth 2.0,DSL and CHES.

Profiling Astronomical Objects Using Unsupervised Learning Approach

Attempts to determine characters of astronomical objects have been one of major and vibrant activities in both astronomy and data science fields.Instead of a manual inspection,various automated systems are invented to satisfy the need,including the classification of light curve profiles.A specific Kaggle competition,namely Photometric LSST Astronomical Time-Series Classification Challenge(PLAsTiCC),is launched to gather new ideas of tackling the abovementioned task using the data set collected from the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope(LSST)project.Almost all proposed methods fall into the supervised family with a common aim to categorize each object into one of pre-defined types.As this challenge focuses on developing a predictive model that is robust to classifying unseen data,those previous attempts similarly encounter the lack of discriminate features,since distribution of training and actual test datasets are largely different.As a result,well-known classification algorithms prove to be sub-optimal,while more complicated feature extraction techniques may help to slightly boost the predictive performance.Given such a burden,this research is set to explore an unsupervised alternative to the difficult quest,where common classifiers fail to reach the 50%accuracy mark.A clustering technique is exploited to transform the space of training data,from which a more accurate classifier can be built.In addition to a single clustering framework that provides a comparable accuracy to the front runners of supervised learning,a multiple-clustering alternative is also introduced with improved performance.In fact,it is able to yield a higher accuracy rate of 58.32%from 51.36%that is obtained using a simple clustering.For this difficult problem,it is rather good considering for those achieved by well-known models like support vector machine(SVM)with 51.80%and Naive Bayes(NB)with only 2.92%.

A High-Temperature Superconducting Wideband Bandpass Filter at the L Band for Radio Astronomy

In order to ensure the normal operation of radio astronomy observations,an extremely sensitive receiver system needs to be equipped in front of the large radio telescope.An 8-pole wideband high-temperature superconducting(HTS)filter using a Coplanar Spiral Resonator Structure with a passband of 1160~1670 MHz is developed to suppress strong radio interference.The filter is fabricated on a 36 mm×14 mm YBCO HTS film,which is deposited on a 0.5 mm thick MgO substrate.The minimum insertion loss measured in the liquid nitrogen temperature region is 0.03 dB,and the first parasitic passband appears at 2600 MHz.The measured results are in good agreement with the simulations.The filter can be used in radio telescope receivers for the observation of neutral hydrogen and pulsars,as well as in high-sensitivity satellite navigation instruments.

Progress Report on Insight-HXMT:China's First X-ray Astronomy Satellite

Insight-HXIUT is China's hrst X-ray astronomy satellite.It was launched on 15 June 2017 and is currently in service smoothly.Insight-HXMT has been used to scan the Galactic plane repeatedly,making pointing observations to neutron stars and black holes,and monitor the whole sky continuously in the MeV band.Insight-HXMT is also very flexible in making ToO observations,with the response time from about 3 hours to within a day.So far more than 50 refereed publications have been made with data from its observations;many more publications have used the data or results of Insight-HXMT one way or another.The scientific impacts of Insight-HXMT have been growing rapidly since launch.We expect Insight-HXMT to continue to operate for several more years.

Chinese Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics

An international bimonthly journal,founded in 2001 as a continuation of Acta Astrophysica Sinica(founded in 1981,ISSN 0253-2379).The Chinese Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ISSN 1009-9271)is published for the Chinese Astronomical Society and the National Astronomical Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences by the Science Press in Beijing.