China blazes a trail to the stars with Asia’s largest observatory
- High above the Tibetan Plateau, astronomers and construction workers are building an array of telescopes to rival sites in Hawaii and Chile
- When completed, Saishiteng Mountain will plug an observational gap as the only facility of its kind in the Eastern Hemisphere
More than 30 telescopes will eventually dot the peaks of Saishiteng Mountain in China’s northwestern Qinghai province, one of the world’s best stargazing sites thanks to its high altitude, dry weather and low light pollution.
For Deng Licai, who set out with a team on foot in 2018 to investigate the mountain’s potential, the hive of activity at several of its jagged peaks is a far cry from that first visit.
“It’s exciting to see so many things going on here,” said Deng, from the National Astronomical Observatories, whose team risked their lives nearly five years ago to reach the summit and set up measuring equipment to confirm their hunch.
Three years of continuous data collection proved them right – that conditions on Saishiteng offered a promising solution to China’s decades-long bottleneck in the development of optical astronomy.
Since then, the local government has built a US$30 million road to connect astronomers and construction workers on the mountain’s peaks with the nearest town Lenghu, or Cold Lake – home to an abandoned petroleum base from the 1990s and a few hundred regular residents – about 1½ hours away.