Supermassive black hole image prompts a new vision of China’s role in submillimetre astronomy

Name: China to open world’s largest telescope to international experts to boost scientific credentials
Uploaded: 2022-05-13T13:01:14.000Z
Duration: 3 min 54 s
Description: China to open world’s largest telescope to international experts to boost scientific credentials

China is a key member of East Asian Observatory but a shrinking budget threatens its James Clerk Maxwell Telescope

Hong Kong academic suggests that China’s willingness to lead smaller Asian nations in astronomy and telescope projects will pay off in future

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Funding for the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope comes from major observatories in EAO members, including Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan and Thailand but its budget has shrunk since EAO was founded. Photo: EAO/JCMT

Ling Xin

Published: 9:01pm, 13 May 2022

As the first-ever photograph of our galaxy’s supermassive black hole excited astronomy fans in China, it renewed calls for the country, a rapidly rising research powerhouse, to play a larger role in regional collaboration.

China is a founding partner of the East Asian Observatory (EAO), which operates one of the eight telescopes used to capture the black hole image – a feat deemed impossible just a generation ago.

Located near the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, the 35-year-old James Clerk Maxwell Telescope is the world’s largest telescope designed specifically to observe in the submillimetre wavelength.

It has supported numerous groundbreaking research projects but been struggling with an unstable and shrinking budget in recent years.

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China to open world’s largest telescope to international experts to boost scientific credentials

The money to run the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope comes from major observatories in EAO members, including Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan and Thailand. The original annual budget was US$4 million, with Japan and China the two biggest contributors, but the budget has fallen to around US$3 million and the two countries’ financial input has dropped significantly too.