Basic Survey Scheduling for the Wide Field Survey Telescope(WFST)

Aiming at improving the survey efficiency of the Wide Field Survey Telescope, we have developed a basic scheduling strategy that takes into account the telescope characteristics, observing conditions, and weather conditions at the Lenghu site. The sky area is divided into rectangular regions, referred to as “tiles,” with a size of2°. 577 × 2°. 634 slightly smaller than the focal area of the mosaic CCDs. These tiles are continuously filled in annulars parallel to the equator. The brightness of the sky background, which varies with the moon phase and distance from the moon, plays a significant role in determining the accessible survey fields. Approximately 50connected tiles are grouped into one block for observation. To optimize the survey schedule, we perform simulations by taking into account the length of exposures, data readout, telescope slewing, and all relevant observing conditions. We utilize the Greedy Algorithm for scheduling optimization. Additionally, we propose a dedicated dithering pattern to cover the gaps between CCDs and the four corners of the mosaic CCD array, which are located outside of the 3° field of view. This dithering pattern helps to achieve relatively uniform exposure maps for the final survey outputs.

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.

Mirror seeing of the Antarctic survey telescope

Site testing results indicate that Antarctic Dome A is an excellent ground-based astronomical site suitable for observations ranging from visible to infrared wavelengths. However, the harsh environment in Antarctica, especially the very low temperature and atmospheric pressure, always produces frost on the telescopes＇ mirrors, which are exposed to the air. Since the Dome A site is still unattended, the Antarctic telescope tubes are always designed to be filled with dry nitrogen, and the outer surfaces of the optical system are heated by an indium-tin oxide thin film. These precautions can prevent the optical surfaces from frosting over, but they degrade the image quality by introducing additional mirror seeing. Based on testing observations of the second Antarctic Survey Telescope （AST3-2） in the Mohe site in China, mirror seeing resulting from the heated aspheric plate has been measured using micro-thermal sensors. Results comparing the real-time atmospheric seeing monitored by the Differential Image Motion Monitor and real-time examinations of image quality agree well.

Optical system research of multi-object fiber spectroscopic survey telescope

In the first part of this paper,four different Cassegrain optical systems with their correctors are designed and studied for multi-object fiber slit spectroscopic survey.The aperture in 6.5 m and field of view 3°are taken for these optical systems.Assuming observation wavelength range is 0.365-0.95μm,the maximum zenith distance for observing is 60°,the maximum diameter of these lenses is 1.66 m,the altitude of the telescope site is 2500 m,two correctors are composed of 4-piece lenses and the other two are 5-piece lenses.The results obtained are:f-ratio about 3.7,the image quality for all four systems with EE80D≤0.60″,the linear diameter of the focal surface is about 1.2 m and 11 000 fibers can be set on it.Considering the limit of size of fused silica and optical glass,the maximum diameter for lens is about 1.7 m.Such a 6.5 m telescope is about the largest one if using the above correctors.Considering the multiobject spectroscopic survey is greatly important,we also studied some telescope optical systems having their aperture near or larger than 10 m used for the multi-object fiber spectroscopic survey.Such ideas are introduced in the last section of this paper.

Research on scheduling of robotic transient survey for Antarctic Survey Telescopes(AST3)

Antarctic Survey Telescopes（AST3） are designed to be fully robotic telescopes at Dome A,Antarctica,which aim for highly efficient time-domain sky surveys as well as rapid response to special transient events（e.g.,gamma-ray bursts,near-Earth asteroids,supernovae,etc.）.Unlike traditional observations,a well-designed real-time survey scheduler is needed in order to implement an automatic survey in a very efficient,reliable and flexible way for the unattended telescopes.We present a study of the survey strategy for AST3 and implementation of its survey scheduler,which is also useful for other survey projects.

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.

Two suggested configurations for the Chinese space telescope

China will establish a 2-meter space-based astronomical telescope. Its main science goals are performing a sky survey for research about dark matter and dark energy, and high resolution observations. Some experts suggest that this space telescope should be installed inside the Chinese space station. In accord with this suggestion we put forward our first configuration, i.e., to adopt a coude system for this telescope. This coude system comes from the Chinese 2.16 m telescope＇s coude system, which includes a relay mirror so that excellent image quality can be obtained. In our second configuration, we suggest that the whole space telescope fly freely as an independent satellite outside the space station. When it needs servicing, for example, changing in- struments, refilling refrigerant or propellant, etc., this space telescope can fly near or even dock with the core space station. Although some space stations have had accom- panying satellites, the one we propose is a space telescope that will be much larger than other accompanying satellites in terms of weight and volume. On the basis of the second configuration, we also put forward the following idea： the space station can be composed of several large independent modules if necessary.

The site conditions of the Guo Shou Jing Telescope

The weather at the Xinglong Observing Station, where the Guo Shou Jing Telescope （GSJT） is located, is strongly affected by the monsoon climate in north- east China. The LAMOST survey strategy is constrained by these weather patterns. We present statistics on observing hours from 2004 to 2007, and the sky brightness, seeing, and sky transparency from 1995 to 2011 at the site. We investigate effects of the site conditions on the survey plan. Operable hours each month show a strong cor- relation with season： on average there are eight operable hours per night available in December, but only one-two hours in July and August. The seeing and the sky trans- parency also vary with season. Although the seeing is worse in windy winters, and the atmospheric extinction is worse in the spring and summer, the site is adequate for the proposed scientific program of the LAMOST survey. With a Monte Carlo simulation using historical data on the site condition, we find that the available observation hours constrain the survey footprint from 22h to 16h in right ascension; the sky brightness allows LAMOST to obtain a limiting magnitude of V = 19.5 mag with S/N= 10.

Blind search for 21-cm absorption systems using a new generation of Chinese radio telescopes

Neutral hydrogen clouds are known to exist in the Universe, however their spatial distributions and physical properties are poorly understood. Such missing information can be studied by the new generation of Chinese radio telescopes through a blind search of 21-cm absorption systems. We forecast the capabilities of surveys of 21-cm absorption systems by two representative radio telescopes in China - the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope （FAST） and Tianlai 21-cm cosmology experiment （Tianlai）. Facilitated by either the high sensitivity （FAST） or wide field of view （Tianlai） of these telescopes, more than a thousand 21-cm absorption systems can be discovered in a few years, representing orders of magnitude improvement over the cumulative discoveries in the past half a century.

Optical system for extremely large spectroscopic survey telescope

This article presents research work on a spectroscopic survey telescope.Our idea is as follows:for such a telescope,a pure reflecting optical system is designed,which should have an aperture and a field of view(FOV)both as large as possible and excellent image quality,and then a strip lensm(lens-prism)atmospheric dispersion corrector(S-ADC)is added,only for correcting the atmospheric dispersion.Given the fund limitation and the simplicity of scaling up,some 12-m telescopes are designed as examples.Su,Korsch,and Meinel put forward the four-mirror Nasmyth systems I and II,which are used in this paper.FOVs of 1.5°,2°,and 2.5°are selected.For all systems,the image qualities are excellent.Because the S-ADC relaxes the optical glass size restriction,this 12-m telescope with a FOV of 2.5°can be magnified in proportion to a 16-m telescope.Its etendue(from Frenchétendue)and focal surface will now be the largest in the world.In such a telescope,a pure reflecting optical system can also be obtained.A subsequent coudésystem is designed with excellent image quality.

News and Views on “J.L. Han, et al., RAA 2021 Vol. 21 No. 5, 107: The FAST Galactic Plane Pulsar Snapshot survey: I. Project design and pulsar discoveries”

The newly commissioned Chinese radio telescope known as FAST is the most sensitive radio telescope in the world.The name FAST derives from its full title“Fivehundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope”giving a clue to why it is so sensitive.Even before the recent demise of the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico,it had the largest collecting area of any“single-dish”radio telescope.Its 300-m effective diameter,combined with a very sensitive 19-beam receiver operating in the“Lband”around 1.4 GHz,makes it more than an order of magnitude more sensitive than any other existing radio telescope operating in this band.

Preface: The LAMOST Galactic surveys and early results

By the time of this writing, the ongoing LAMOST Galactic surveys have collected approximately 4.5 million stellar spectra with signal-to-noise ratios better than 10 per pixel. This special issue is devoted to early results from the surveys, mostly based on the LAMOST Data Release 1 （DR1; Luo et al., this volume） that contains data secured by May 2013, the end of the first year of regular surveys, al- though a few studies have made use of data collected in the second year of regular surveys. LAMOST DR1 was released to the Chinese astronomical community and international partners in August 2013 and made public to the whole world in March 2015. Here we briefly review the scope and motivation, data reduction and release, as well as early results of the surveys. As the project advances, one can expect that these surveys will yield an exquisite description of the distribution, kinematics and chemistry of Galactic stellar populations, especially those within a few kpc of the Sun, a robust measurement of the local dark matter density, and, consequently, shed light on how our Galaxy, and other galaxies in general, form and evolve.

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.

The first comprehensive Milky Way stellar mock catalogue for the Chinese Space Station Telescope Survey Camera

The Chinese Space Station Telescope(CSST)is a cutting-edge two-meter astronomical space telescope currently under construction.Its primary Survey Camera(SC)is designed to conduct large-area imaging sky surveys using a sophisticated seven-band photometric system.The resulting data will provide unprecedented data for studying the structure and stellar populations of the Milky Way.To support the CSST development and scientific projects related to its survey data,we generate the first comprehensive Milky Way stellar mock catalogue for the CSST SC photometric system using the TRILEGAL stellar population synthesis tool.The catalogue includes approximately 12.6 billion stars,covering a wide range of stellar parameters,photometry,astrometry,and kinematics,with magnitude reaching down to g=27.5 mag in the AB magnitude system.The catalogue represents our benchmark understanding of the stellar populations in the Milky Way,enabling a direct comparison with the future CSST survey data.Particularly,it sheds light on faint stars hidden from current sky surveys.Our crowding limit analysis based on this catalogue provides compelling evidence for the extension of the CSST Optical Survey(OS)to cover low Galactic latitude regions.The strategic extension of the CSST-OS coverage,combined with this comprehensive mock catalogue,will enable transformative science with the CSST.

The FAST all sky HI survey(FASHI):The first release of catalog

The FAST All Sky HI survey(FASHI)was designed to cover the entire sky observable by the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope(FAST),spanning approximately 22000 square degrees of declination between-14°and+66°,and in the frequency range of 1050-1450 MHz,with the expectation of eventually detecting more than 100000 HI sources.Between August 2020 and June 2023,FASHI had covered more than 7600 square degrees,which is approximately 35%of the total sky observable by FAST.It has a median detection sensitivity of around 0.76 m Jy beam-1and a spectral line velocity resolution of~6.4 km s-1at a frequency of~1.4 GHz.As of now,a total of 41741 extragalactic HI sources have been detected in the frequency range 1305.5-1419.5 MHz,corresponding to a redshift limit of z■0.09.By cross-matching FASHI sources with the Siena Galaxy Atlas(SGA)and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey(SDSS)catalogs,we found that 16972(40.7%)sources have spectroscopic redshifts and 10975(26.3%)sources have only photometric redshifts.Most of the remaining 13794(33.0%)HI sources are located in the direction of the Galactic plane,making their optical counterparts difficult to identify due to high extinction or high contamination of Galactic stellar sources.Based on current survey results,the FASHI survey is an unprecedented blind extragalactic H I survey.It has higher spectral and spatial resolution and broader coverage than the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA Survey(ALFALFA).When completed,FASHI will provide the largest extragalactic HI catalog and an objective view of HI content and large-scale structure in the local universe.

Suggested quasi-Cassegrain system for multi-beam observation of FAST

FAST,the largest single-dish radio telescope in the world,has a 500-meter diameter main reflector and a 300-meter diameter illuminated area.It has a main reflector that can vary its shape,which continuously changes the shape of the illuminated area in reflector into a paraboloid.In this article,we propose a quasiCassegrain system for FAST.The detailed design results are provided.Such a quasi-Cassegrain system only needs to add a 14.6-meter diameter secondary reflector,which is close to the size of the feed cabin.The distance from the secondary reflector to the focus is only 5.08 m,and it has excellent image quality.In this quasi-Cassegrain system,the shape of the illuminated area in the main reflector continuously changes into an optimized hyperboloid.Using this quasi-Cassegrain system from frequency 0.5 GHz to 8 GHz,the multi-beam system can include 7 to 217 feeds.If this system is used in combination with Phased Array Feed(PAF)technology,more multi-beam feeds or a higher working frequency can be used.