China builds telescope to scan celestial spectra

China has built the finest optical telescope to scan from millions of stars. The Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope, or LAMOST is the biggest of its kind in the world.

Visitors look at a part of the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber  Spectroscopy Telescope (LAMOST) in Xinglong, Hebei Province, north China, June 4, 2009.(Xinhua/Wang Yongji)

Scientists plan to use the telescope to scan 10 million celestial spectra in the coming five to six years. It's one of the world's most ambitious astronomical endeavors to record key data betraying how the universe was formed. The data will be made available to scientists around the world.

So far, the scientific community has found the existence of billions of celestial bodies, but have only managed to collect spectra of about one in every 10,000 of them.