Radio telescope (Photo : Reuters)
The Chinese government has released to astronomers worldwide on March 19, Thursday, observation data collected by China’s finest optical telescope project, the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST).
According to Xinhua, the high-quality spectra data gathered by LAMOST is essential to astronomers in determining the chemical composition of celestial bodies, including the atmosphere, density and magnetism.
The government completed the telescope project in 2008 that was primarily built to collect the said valuable data.
LAMOST's DR1 data, which were taken from its first year of operations, contain more than 2.2 million spectra from galaxies, quasi-stellar objects (QSO), stellars, and unknown types of celestial bodies, Xinhua reported.
The report said that the same set of data was first released in Aug. 2013 to Chinese astronomers and their international partners, as standard practice.
The DR1 data were reportedly instrumental in the discovery of several new dwarfs, QSOs and other celestial bodies.
The second set of data, DR2, which contains 4.13 spectra collected during the second year of its observation, is now available to Chinese astronomers and international partners, the report added.
LAMOST is managed by the National Astronomical Observations of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC). It is located at the Xinglong Observing Station, approximately 170 kilometers northeast of Beijing.
"LAMOST observations between 2012 and 2017 are expected to collect more than five million high-quality spectra in total. These spectra data will be the cornerstone for digitizing the universe and provide significant help for studying the structure, movements, formation and development of the universe," said Zhao Gang, a senior NAOC official, was quoted as saying.
DR1 data set is available for download at http://dr1.lamost.org.
