Speaker
Description
Wide Field Survey Telescope (WFST) is the largest time-domain survey facility in the northern hemisphere. The telescope is a dedicated photometric surveying facility being built jointly by the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) and the Purple Mountain Observatory (PMO). It is equipped with a 2.5-meter diameter primary mirror, an active optics system, and a mosaic CCD camera with 0.73 giga-pixels on the primary focal plane for high-quality image capture over an FOV of 6.5 square degrees. WFST is located on the Tibetan Plateau, near Lenghu Town in Qinghai Province, at an altitude of 4200 meters. The WFST project began in 2018 and has already been completed and started astronomical observations in September 2023. In December 2024, after an ~1-year commissioning and pilot survey, WFST has begun formal time domain survey observations. In this talk, the performance and scientific progress of WFST will be presented.