Telescope set to unravel cosmic mysteries

Special equipment

The telescope will be equipped with five instruments, including a survey camera. The main focal plane of the camera is equipped with 30 81-mega-pixel detectors that will take images and spectra of roughly 17,500 square degrees of the median-to-high galactic latitude and median-to-high ecliptic latitude sky in multiple bands, the researchers said.

Four other instruments mounted on the CSST have been designed to observe individual objects or small fields, such as mapping star-forming regions of the Milky Way, obtaining instantaneous colors of fast-varying objects such as comets and spinning asteroids, studying the coevolution of supermassive black holes and galaxies and star formation in the nearby part of the universe, and direct imaging of exoplanets in the visible range.

The CSST is likely to be the largest space telescope for astronomy in the near-ultraviolet and visible range in the decade before 2035, Zhan said.

To explain the CSST's capabilities, Li used the analogy of photographing a flock of sheep.

"Hubble may see a sheep, but the CSST sees thousands, all at the same resolution," he said.