CSTAR, Chinese made telescopes installed for the first time on the Amery Ice Shelf, have

been working smoothly to observe the Antarctic sky, and feeding to the ground control with

continuous flows of image data. The development indicates that Chinese scientists have

found solutions to a string of problems that had to be solved before making four CSTAR

telescopes operational in the extreme working environment of the Antarctic, including

large view field tuning, lens icing, and long distance shipping.

According to a briefing, the telescopes had been tested to watch stars of a limiting visual

magnitude of 13 at the Xinglong Observatory, a national astronomical observation station,

before being shipped to the Antarctic. The unique atmospheric condition of the Amery Ice

Shelf in the Antarctic allows an observation of the darkest stars at a limiting visual

magnitude of 16.5.