KOSMA Submilimeter Telescope Being Disassembled in the Swiss Alps

Disassembled in the Swiss Alps, KOSMA telescope will be relocated to China.  KOSMA will belong to the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC).  It will be the first submilimeter telescope that can be used for routine astronomical observation in China.

On June 2, 2010 of local time, the last component, the base, of the KOSMA submilimeter telescope was craned by helicopter, and left the dome located in Gornergrat at an altitude of 3100 meters. This means that the KOSMA submilimeter telescope has been successfully dissembled with the joint efforts and hard work by both the Chinese and German technical experts after a period of two months.

A day before, the last big box filled with telescope equipments (except the base ) was hoisted by the electric hoist from the dome to the ground ,and was loaded to the cargo train with the other nearly 40 boxes of telescope equipments. All the KOSMA equipments will be transferred to Yangbajing in Tibet of China, at an altitude of 4500 meters, by trian, ship or truck. By the end of this August, both the Chinese and German experts will faced much harder work than before for further installation and adjustment of KOSMA in China.

According to the Sino-Germany agreement in this regard, KOSMA will belong to the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences ever since it is hoisted away from Gornergrat of Switzerland. As such, given the relocation and the adjustment being successful, this telescope will be the first submilimeter telescope that can be used for routine astronomical observation in China, and will be the only submilimeter telescope observatory with the highest altitude in the Northern Hemisphere and one of the highest altitude observatories in the world as well.

Picture 1:The last component, the base, of the KOSMA submlimeter telescope was craned away from dome by helicopter.

 
 
Picture 2:After unloaded the base, Jun-jie Wang and Jian-bin Li, researchers from NAOC, were cheering.