Site testing campaign for the Large Optical Telescope at the Ali site

The Large Optical/infrared Telescope(LOT)is a ground-based 12 m diameter telescope which is proposed to be built in western China.The site selection for LOT in China began in 2016,and Ali was listed as one of the three candidate sites.Remote studies and local surveys have been carried out for more than 15 years in western China,and the results show that Ali is a promising site with comprehensive quality in terms of atmospheric and supporting conditions.An overview of the site testing campaign at the Ali site from 2016 to 2019 is presented.After the two years of data collection,the overall median seeing value is found to be 1.17 arcsec,the observable nights are 81.71%and the good observable nights are 71.76%.The weather conditions as follows,the median night temperature value is-5.18℃,the median night relative humidity value is 41.25%,the median night atmospheric pressure value is 540.92 hPa,the median night wind speed value is 7.41 m s-1 and the mainly wind direction is southwestern(SW).The median night sky background value is 22.07 magV.We also discuss the wind speed at different locations on-site,the possibility of light pollution and the effect of wind speed on differential image motion monitor(DIMM)seeing measurements.

The Jiao Tong University Spectroscopic Telescope Project

The Jiao Tong University Spectroscopic Telescope(JUST)is a 4.4-meter f/6.0 segmented-mirror telescope dedicated to spectroscopic observations.The JUST primary mirror is composed of 18 hexagonal segments,each with a diameter of 1.1 m.JUST provides two Nasmyth platforms for placing science instruments.One Nasmyth focus fits a field of view of 10′and the other has an extended field of view of 1.2°with correction optics.A tertiary mirror is used to switch between the two Nasmyth foci.JUST will be installed at a site at Lenghu in Qinghai Province,China,and will conduct spectroscopic observations with three types of instruments to explore the dark universe,trace the dynamic universe,and search for exoplanets:(1)a multi-fiber(2000 fibers)medium-resolution spectrometer(R=4000-5000)to spectroscopically map galaxies and large-scale structure;(2)an integral field unit(IFU)array of 500 optical fibers and/or a long-slit spectrograph dedicated to fast follow-ups of transient sources for multi-messenger astronomy;(3)a high-resolution spectrometer(R~100000)designed to identify Jupiter analogs and Earth-like planets,with the capability to characterize the atmospheres of hot exoplanets.

Design and application of an autonomous Master Control System for a multi-layer magnetic and helioseismic telescope

With the growing significance of space weather forecasting,multi-layer magnetic and helioseismic telescopes are emerging as a key area of research.However,owing to the diverse operational processes and sophisticated hardware configurations of these devices,there is an urgent need for efficient autonomous observation capabilities.An autonomous Master Control System(MCS)can ensure efficient performance,data consistency,and stability,and the prototype presented here adopts a microservices architecture,breaking down the hardware into multiple subsystems and converting their functions into individual services.A central decision-making system leads the operations,supported by three auxiliary systems and three device control systems.Through inter-subsystem service calls,it achieves rapid imaging and spectroscopic monitoring.To verify system stability and observation efficiency,the system was tested on the Solar Full-disk Multi-layer Magnetograph.Experimental results verify this system can operate automatically for 4 consecutive months,acquire photospheric vector magnetic and Doppler velocity fields within a 15-minute interval,and measure chromospheric longitudinal magnetic and Doppler velocity fields in under 180 s.This ensures consistent and stable solar monitoring and serves as a practical methodological benchmark for the development of similar devices.

A Tilt-correction Adaptive Optical System for the Solar Telescope of Nanjing University

A tilt-correction adaptive optical system installed on the 430 mm Solar Telescope of Nanjing University has been put in operation. It consists of a tip-tilt mirror, a correlation tracker and an imaging CCD camera. An absolute difference algorithm is used for detecting image motion in the correlation tracker. The sampling frequency of the system is 419 Hz. We give a description of the system's configuration, an analysis of its performance and a report of our observational results. A residual jitter of 0.14 arcsec has been achieved. The error rejection bandwidth of the system can be adjusted in the range 5-28 Hz according to the beacon size and the strength of atmospheric turbulence.

China's Next Optical/Infrared Telescope: The Debate Is On

China’s ambition to build a 12 m aperture optical/infrared telescope in Tibet has been recently challenged by intense disputes over its design options.The Large Optical/Infrared Telescope,or LOT,which will become the world’s biggest upon completion before the 30 m-level ones are in place,is expected to give Chinese astronomers a head start in exploring the early universe and exoplanets among other scientific goals.However,optical engineers and scientists are holding on to very different opinions as for what is the best technical route to get there.

The Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST)

The Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST, also called the Guo Shou Jing Telescope) is a special reflecting Schmidt telescope. LAMOST’s special design allows both a large aperture (effective aperture of 3.6 m–4.9 m) and a wide field of view (FOV) (5°). It has an innovative active reflecting Schmidt configuration which continuously changes the mirror’s surface that adjusts during the observation process and combines thin deformable mirror active optics with segmented active optics. Its primary mirror (6.67m×6.05 m) and active Schmidt mirror (5.74m×4.40 m) are both segmented, and composed of 37 and 24 hexagonal sub-mirrors respectively. By using a parallel controllable fiber positioning technique, the focal surface of 1.75 m in diameter can accommodate 4000 optical fibers. Also, LAMOST has 16 spectrographs with 32 CCD cameras. LAMOST will be the telescope with the highest rate of spectral acquisition. As a national large scientific project, the LAMOST project was formally proposed in 1996, and approved by the Chinese government in 1997. The construction started in 2001, was completed in 2008 and passed the official acceptance in June 2009. The LAMOST pilot survey was started in October 2011 and the spectroscopic survey will launch in September 2012. Up to now, LAMOST has released more than 480 000 spectra of objects. LAMOST will make an important contribution to the study of the large-scale structure of the Universe, structure and evolution of the Galaxy, and cross-identification of multiwaveband properties in celestial objects.

Comparing different light-emitting diodes as light sources for long path differential optical absorption spectroscopy NO_2 and SO_2 measurements

In this paper, we present a comparison of different light-emitting diodes （LEDs） as the light source for long path differential optical absorption spectroscopy （LP-DOAS） atmospheric trace gas measurements. In our study, we use a fiberoptic design, where high power LEDs used as the light source are coupled into the telescope using a Y shape fiber bundle. Two blue and one ultraviolet （UV） LEDs with different emission wavelength ranges are tested for NO2 and SO2 measurements. The detailed description of the instrumental setup, the NO2 and SO2 retrieval procedure, the error analysis, and the preliminary results from the measurements carried out in Science Island, Hefei, Anhui, China are presented. Our first measurement results show that atmospheric NO2 and SO2 have strong temporal variations in that area and that the measurement accuracy is strongly dependent on the visibility conditions. The measured NO2 and SO2 data are compared to the Ozone Monitoring Instrument （OMI） satellite observations. The results show that the OMI NO2 product underestimates the ground level NO2 by 45%, while the OMI SO2 data are highly influenced by clouds and aerosols, which can lead to large biases in the ground level concentrations. During the experiment, the mixing ratios of the atmospheric NO2 and SO2 vary from 8 ppbv to 36 ppbv and from 3 ppbv to 18 ppbv, respectively.

New vacuum solar telescope and observations with high resolution

The New Vacuum Solar Telescope （NVST） is a one meter vacuum solar telescope that aims to observe fine structures on the Sun. The main goals of NVST are high resolution imaging and spectral observations, including measurements of the solar magnetic field. NVST is the primary ground-based facility used by the Chinese solar research community in this solar cycle. It is located by Fuxian Lake in southwest China, where the seeing is good enough to perform high resolution observations. We first introduce the general conditions at the Fuxian Solar Observatory and the primary science cases of NVST. Then, the basic structures of this telescope and instruments are described in detail. Finally, some typical high resolution data of the solar photosphere and chromosphere are also shown.

Modeling the rail surface unevenness of a high-precision radio telescope

This study proposed a coarse-fine mixed model for describing the rail surface unevenness of an ultra-large fully steerable radio telescope （Qi Tai Telescope） with a diameter of 110 meters. The rail surface unevenness includes information on error arising from two different scales, i.e., the long-period- short-change and the short-period-long-change. Consequently, in this study an idea of a mixed model was proposed, in which trigonometric and fractal functions were, respectively, used to describe infor- mation on error from two scales. Key parameters were determined by using the least squares method and the wavelet transform method, and finally, a specific mathematical expression of the model was obtained by optimization. To validate the effectiveness of the new modeling method, the mixed model was then used to describe the rails of the Green Bank Telescope, the Large Millimeter Telescope, and a radio telescope in Miyun, Beijing. A comparative study revealed that the maximum error was less than 15 %, thus the result was superior to those of existing modeling methods.

First light on the 127-element adaptive optical system for 1.8-m telescope

A 127-element adaptive optical system has been developed and integrated into a 1.8-m astronomical telescope in September 2009.In addition,the first light on a high-resolution imaging for stars has been achieved（September 23,2009）.In this letter,a 127-element adaptive optical system for 1.8-m telescope is described briefly.Moreover,star observation results in the first run are reported.Results show that the angular resolution of the system after adaptive optics correction can attain 0.1 arcsec,which approaches the diffraction limit of 1.8-m telescope at 700-900 nm band.

Modified Multi-Resolution Telescopic Search Algorithm for Block-Matching Motion Estimation

This paper presents a modified multi-resolution telescopic search algorithm (MRTlcSA) for the block-matching motion estimation. A novel inverse telescopic search is substituted for the conventional telescopic search, that reduces the on-chip memory size and memory bandwidth for VLSI implementation. In addition, strategies of motion track and adaptive search window are applied to reduce the computational complexity of motion estimation. Simulation results show that, compared with the MRTleSA, the proposed algorithm reduces the computational load to only 30% while preserving almost the same image quality. Comparisons on hardware cost and power consumption of the VLSI implementations using the two algorithms are also presented in the paper.

An active reflector antenna using a laser angle metrology system

An active reflector is one of the key technologies for constructing large telescopes, especially for millimeter/sub-millimeter radio telescopes. This article in- troduces a new efficient laser angle metrology system for an active reflector antenna on large radio telescopes. Our experiments concentrate on developing an active reflec- tor for improving the detection precisions and the maintenance of the surface shape in real time on the 65-meter prototype radio telescope constructed by Nanjing Institute of Astronomical Optics and Technology （NIAOT; http：//65rn.shao.cas.cn/）. The test results indicate that the accuracy of the surface shape segmentation and maintenance has the dimensions of microns, and the time-response can be on the order of minutes. Our efforts proved to be workable for sub-millimeter radio telescopes.

37-element solar adaptive optics for 26-cm solar fine structure telescope at Yunnan Astronomical Observatory

A 37-element solar adaptive optics （AO） system was built and installed at the 26-cm solar fine structure telescope of Yunnan Astronomical Observatory. The AO system is composed of a fine tracking loop with a tip/tilt mirror and a correlation tracker, a high-order correction loop with a 37-element deformable mirror, a correlating Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor based on the absolute difference algorithm, and a real time controller. The system was completed on Sep. 28, 2009 and was used to obtain AO-corrected high-resolution solar images. The contrast and resolution of the images are clearly improved after wavefront correction by AO. To the best of out knowledge, this system is the first solar AO system in China.

Science with the 2.5-meter Wide Field Survey Telescope(WFST)

The Wide Field Survey Telescope(WFST) is a dedicated photometric surveying facility being built jointly by University of Science and Technology of China(USTC) and the Purple Mountain Observatory(PMO). It is equipped with a 2.5-meter diameter primary mirror, an active optics system, and a mosaic CCD camera with 0.73 gigapixels on the primary focal plane for highquality image capture over a 6.5-square-degree field of view. The installation of WFST near the summit of Saishiteng mountain in the Lenghu region is scheduled in summer of 2023, and the operation is planned to start three months later. WFST will scan the northern sky in four optical bands(u, g, r and i) at cadences from hourly/daily in the deep high-cadence survey(DHS) program, to semi-weekly in the wide field survey(WFS) program. During a photometric night, a nominal 30 s exposure in the WFS program will reach a depth of 22.27, 23.32, 22.84, and 22.31(AB magnitudes) in these four bands, respectively, allowing for the detection of a tremendous amount of transients in the low-z universe and a systematic investigation of the variability of Galactic and extragalactic objects. In the DHS program, intranight 90 s exposures as deep as 23(u) and 24 mag(g), in combination with target of opportunity follow-ups, will provide a unique opportunity to explore energetic transients in demand for high sensitivities, including the electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational wave events, supernovae within a few hours of their explosions,tidal disruption events and fast, luminous optical transients even beyond redshift of unity. In addition, the final 6-year co-added images, anticipated to reach g■25.8 mag in WFS or 1.5 mags deeper in DHS, will be of fundamental importance to general Galactic and extragalactic science. The highly uniform legacy surveys of WFST will serve as an indispensable complement to those of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time(LSST) that monitors the southern sky.

Method of evaluation of a mirror surface figure based on frequency domain and its application for the Giant Steerable Science Mirror of the Thirty Meter Telescope

We propose a sub-aperture stitching algorithm based on a frequency domain that can be denoted as a power spectral density （PSD）. Our algorithm is verified by the experimental data obtained from measuring a epl.23 m mirror at the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics. Then, we apply it to the Great Steer- ing Science Mirror （GSSM） of the Thirty Meter Telescope （TMT） with the simulated data before the preliminary design phase, and obtain a more objective result on the frequency domain aberrations. Therefore, the sub-aperture stitching-based PSD is expected to be useful for specifying a large aperture mirror surface for mirror vendors.

Performance modeling of the adaptive optics system on the 2.16 m telescope

The adaptive optics system on the 2.16 m telescope is modeled and simulated using an ends-to-ends Monte Carlo method in this paper.Under the optimized parameters,the Strehl ratio can be increased from about 0.02 to more than 0.2 in the J,H and K bands with a classical adaptive optics system.Based on the simulation results,the practical system design is also considered and discussed.

Design of apochromatic telescope without anomalous dispersion glasses

A novel lens system with correction of secondary spectrum without using anomalous glasses is presented. The lens system comprises four separated lens components, with three of them being subapertures. Two examples of apochromatic telescope are presented, both with the use of typical normal glasses, namely crown K9 and flint F5 glasses, and low-cost slightly anomalous dispersion glasses. Secondary spectrum and other chromatic aberrations of the two design examples are corrected.

Real-time measurement of atmospheric parameters for the 127-element adaptive optics system of 1.8-m telescope

A real-time method for measuring atmospheric parameters based on co-processor field-programmable gate array （FPGA） and main processor digital signal processing （DSP） is proposed for ground-based telescopes with adaptive optics （AO） systems. Coherence length, outer scale, average wind speed, and coherence time are estimated according to closed-loop data on the residual slopes and the corrected voltages of AO systems. This letter introduces the principle and architecture design of the proposed method, which is successfully applied in the 127-element AO system of the 1.8-m telescope of Yunnan Astronomical Observatory. The method enables real-time atmospheric observations with the same object and path of the AO system. This method is also applicable to extended objects.

Prototype of solar ground layer adaptive optics at the 1 m New Vacuum Solar Telescope

A prototype of a solar ground-layer adaptive optics （GLAO） system, which consists of a multi-direction corre- lating Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor with 30 effective subapertures and about a 1 arcmin field of view （FoV） in each subaperture, a deformable mirror with 151 actuators conjugated to the telescope entrance pupil, and a custom-built real-time controller based on field-programmable gate array and multi-core digital signal processor （DSP）, is implemented at the 1 m New Vacuum Solar Telescope at Fuxian Solar Observatory and saw its first light on January 12th, 2016. The on-sky observational results show that the solar image is apparently improved in the whole FoV over 1 arcmin with the GLAO correction.

Magnetic fluid based deformable mirror for aberration correction of liquid telescope

A magnetic fluid based deformable mirror(MFDM) that could produce a large stroke more than 100 μm is designed and demonstrated experimentally with respect to the characteristics of the aberration of the liquid telescope. Its aberration correction performance is verified by the co-simulation using COMSOL and MATLAB. Furthermore, the stroke performance of the MFDM and the decentralized linear quadratic Gaussian(LQG) mirror surface control approach are experimentally evaluated with a prototype of MFDM in an adaptive optics system to show its potential application for the large aberration correction of liquid telescopes.