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| LULIN OBSERVATORY TO INSTALL 2-METER TELESCOPE
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| Author：Central News Agency Position：Central News Agency |
| Article Source：Central News Agency 2007/04/01 |
| Publish Date：2007.04.02 |
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Taiwan's first two-meter telescope will be fully operational by 2009 at the Lulin Observatory on Jade Mountain -- the highest mountain in Southeast Asia -- according to Taoyuan County-based National Central University (NCU).
Daisuke Kinoshita, assistant professor at NCU's Graduate Institute of Astronomy, emphasized that once the new telescope joins the existing array of equipment, the facility's research capacity will expand a great deal.
Kinoshita explained that Lulin Observatory at present has a one-meter telescope -- the largest in diameter in Taiwan -- and the instrument has helped so far in discovering 11 supernovas, hundreds of asteroids and dozens of variable stars. However, its functions are limited to visible light and it lacks full-spectrum capturing ability.
"Against this backdrop," he added, "the staff often miss the best observations at the first appearance of novas and comets, while further research also relies unduly on data provided by other observatories to cover the shortfall in the images produced by the one-meter telescope."
The two-meter telescope possesses four-fold light-gathering power compared with the one-meter, as well as a set of advanced instrumentation, including an optical spectrometer and an infrared camera.
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