Xinglong Observatory was founded in 1968, and is one of the primary observatories administered by National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC). As the largest observatory in the continent of Asia, it contains nine telescopes whose effective apertures are larger than 50 cm.
Huairou Solar Observatory is one of the key observatories administered by NAOC. It was built in 1984 and is located on an island near the north bank of the Huairou reservoir, 60 km north of downtown Beijing. The main scientific objective of the observatory is to measure and study solar magnetic and velocity fields at various altitudes in the solar atmosphere.
Miyun Ground Station, an astronomical observing base built since the 1960’s, is located in the Bulaotun Township to the northern bank of Miyun Reservoir. It currently is equipped with two big radio telescopes, 50m and 40m diameter telescopes, working in S and X dual frequencies.
The 21 CentiMeter Array (21CMA), sited in Tianshan Mountains, west China, is a ground based meter-wave interferometric array designed to probe the 21cm radiation of neutral hydrogen from the cosmic dawn and the epoch of reionization at z=6-27. The array, constructed from August 2005 to July 2006 and upgraded by July 2010, consists of 81 pods with 127 log-period antennas for each, which are deployed along two perpendicular arms of 6+4 km in length.
The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) is a Chinese megascience project to build the largest single dish radio telescope in the world. The funding proposal for FAST was approved by the National Development and Reform Commission in July 2007. The FAST foundation was established in December 2008. Construction officially commenced in March 2011, and FAST had first light on 25 September 2016.
As one of the first cultures in history to keep detailed records about the night sky, ancient Chinese astronomy has developed over the past five thousand years. Calendar making and documented observations of celestial phenomena were two important aspects, as well as the construction of instruments that complemented these tasks. Therefore, abundant records on celestial phenomena were compiled through these activities. Some are still useful for modern astronomical research.
The NAOC supercomputer Laohu (Tiger) is running with 85 nodes that were installed in 2010. It was one of the first GPU accelerated supercomputers in China, with two NVIDIA Tesla C1060 GPUs per node. Its peak performance in 2010 was 170 Teraflop/s (SP) and 75 Teraflop/s (DP). At that time, it was among the 50 most powerful computers in the world.
The Virtual Observatory (VO) aims to provide a research environment that will open up new possibilities for scientific research based on data discovery, efficient data access, and interoperability. The vision is of global astronomy archives connected via the VO to form a multiwavelength digital sky that can be searched, visualized, and analyzed in new and innovative ways.
