ABSTRACT
The 2m-aperture Chinese Survey Space Telescope (also known as the Chinese Space Station Telescope, CSST) is a major science project of China Manned Space Program. It is expected to start science operations in 2024 and has a nominal mission lifetime of 10 years. During observations, the CSST will fly independently at a large distance from the space station. It can dock with the space station for servicing as scheduled or as needed. With a Cook-type three-mirror anastigmat design, the CSST can achieve superior image quality within a large field of view (FoV), which gives it an advantage for survey observations. The CSST will be launched with 5 first-generation instruments including a Survey Camera, a Terahertz Receiver, a Multichannel Imager, an Integral Field Spectrograph, and a Cool Planet Imaging Coronagraph. Its primary task is to carry out a high-resolution large-area multiband imaging and slitless spectroscopy survey covering the wavelength range of 255 nm to 1000 nm. It will take the Survey Camera roughly 7 years of operation accumulated over 10 years of orbital time to image roughly 17,500 square degrees of the sky in NUV, u, g, r, i, z, and y bands and take slitless spectroscopy of the same sky in 3 bands. The point-source 5σ limiting magnitudes in g and r bands can reach 26 (AB mag) or higher. The spectral resolution (R=λ/Δλ) of the slitless spectrograph is specified to be on average no less than 200, and the wide-band-equivalent limiting magnitudes in GV (400-620 nm) and GI (620-1000 nm) bands will reach 23 or higher. Deep fields will be selected for more observations to reach at least one magnitude deeper than the wide-area survey. In this talk, I will give an update of the project and discuss its capabilities and survey performance. BIO Dr. Hu Zhan is the Project Scientist of the CSST and chief designer of the CSST Survey Camera. His research areas include cosmology, optical and near infrared camera technology, and detector characterization methods. After obtaining his PhD form the University of Arizona in 2004, he worked at the University of California at Davis first as a postdoctoral researcher and then assistant project physicist, working on the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (later renamed Vera Rubin Observatory). He moved to National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2009 and has been there since then. He is also an adjunct professor at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Peking University. Host: Wei Cui
