A telescope in northern China has collected data on more than 7 million stars, surpassing that of all existing spectroscopic information on stars and making it the world's largest database in the field, the country's state media announced on Tuesday.
The National Astronomical Observatories, which is administered by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), recently released the findings made with the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fibre Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) in Hebei Province, according to the Xinhua News Agency.
LAMOST, also known in China as the Guo Shoujing telescope after a renowned 13th century Chinese astronomer, has been in operation since 2012. It is the world's first large-area telescope capable of observing and collecting data from 4,000 stars at any one time.
The spectra of stars can shed light to important information, including the star's state of motion, its temperature, mass, and chemical composition, said Hou Yonghui, an astronomical researcher with CAS.
"Data [taken by the Guo Shoujing telescope] are paramount for astronomical studies," Liu Chao, a fellow researcher with the national observatories, told Xinhua.
The data collected by the telescope has previously led to a number of scientific discoveries in recent years.
In 2014, the telescope was used by scientists to successfully track down a hypervelocity star, which is a type of star that is capable of travelling at speeds so fast that it can escape the gravity of a galaxy.
Because of the recent data collected, dozens of hypervelocity stars are expected to be discovered in the near future, according to astronomers.
The telescope also provides data for measuring the mass of "dark matter," a concept critical to the theoretical study of the universe.
Thanks to a larger database that has been collected using the telescope, measurements of the mass of "dark matter" could become more accurate, according to Xinhua.