Robotic telescope put into operation in China

Beijing: A robotic telescope built jointly by China and Thailand to search special celestial bodies has been operationalised at an observation station in southwest China, the state-media reported today.

The 70-cm telescope, which was installed at Yunnan Observatory in Lijiang city in Yunnan Province, was completed last December, said Qian Shengbang, a research fellow with the observatory.

At low latitudes, Lijiang enjoys high atmospheric transparency. "(This means) the telescope can help us conduct long-term monitoring of the southern sky to see the movements and evolution, and search for special celestial bodies such as black holes or brown dwarfs," he said.

The telescope has been tested and the data acquired will be used to inform time-series photometry, Qian said. Yunnan Observatory has collaborated with Thailand for more than two decades, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. A robotic telescope is an astronomical telescope and detector system that makes observations without the human intervention.