“梦飞巡天望远镜发布首帧国际真彩色天图”入选2023年“云南大学十大科技进展”
“Mephisto team releases the world first true-colour celestial image” was awarded the 2023 YNU Top 10 Science and Technology Advances
2024年1月18日，云南大学召开2024 年度国家自然科学基金申请工作布置会。会上，学校颁布2023年“云南大学十大科技进展”。云南大学中国西南天文研究所刘晓为教授团队领衔的“梦飞巡天望远镜发布首帧国际真彩色天图”成果入选，排名第一。
天文学是研究宇宙基本规律的科学。巡天是天文学研究的起点。刘晓为教授团队领导研制的多通道测光巡天望远镜（梦飞巡天望远镜）是国际首台大视场、多通道高精度成像巡天望远镜，可同时在三个波段拍摄天体图像，获取天体超高精度亮度及颜色信息，录制宇宙天体运动和变化的彩色纪录片。2023年12月21日，梦飞巡天望远镜首次获得蓝黄红三通道同时拍摄的天体图像，发布了首帧国际真彩色天图，在学界和公众中引起了巨大的反响。梦飞巡天望远镜的建成，为天文学领域开展自主创新又增添一国之重器。
图1. “梦飞巡天望远镜发布首帧国际真彩色天图”入选2023年“云南大学十大科技进展”。Fig. 1 “Mephisto team releases the world first true-colour celestial image” was awarded the 2023 YNU Top 10 Science and Technology Advances.
On January 18, 2024, at a meeting on 2024 National Natural Science Foundation of China grant applications, YNU announced the "Top 10 Science and Technology Advances at Yunnan University in 2023". The achievement "Mephisto team releases the world first true-colour celestial image" led by Professor Xiaowei Liu, received the top award.
Astronomy is the science that studies the fundamental laws of the universe. Large-scale surveys serve as the starting point for astronomical research. The Multi-channel Photometric Survey Telescope (Mephisto), proposed and led by SWIFAR, is a wide-field, multi-channel, high-precision photometric survey telescope, the first of its type in the world. It can simultaneously image the same patch of sky in three channels: blue (u or v band - 345 or 389 nm), yellow (g or r band - 527 or 625 nm), and red (i or z band - 830 or 937 nm), yielding real-time colours of astronomical objects with unprecedented accuracies, and deliver for the first time a coloured documentary of our evolving universe. On December 21, 2023, Mephisto team achieved the first simultaneous images in the blue, yellow, and red channels, and released the world first true-colour celestial image, which was warmly received by the academic community and the public. The operation of Mephisto adds another important facility to the field of astronomy for innovative research as well as education.
