The area was nominally under Mongol control following an invasion in the 16th and 17th centuries, however, the more recent history is somewhat obscure, she says. Prior to the 1950s, groups of nomadic peoples, including Uyghurs and Mongols, lived in the region, according to Van Vleet. “But that oil industry seems to have dried up in the 1980s - the population shrank from possibly around 120,000 to 800 people.” Lenghu was “the key petroleum town in the province of Qinghai,” she says. Then and now - University of California, Berkeley Professor of History of Tibet and Inner Asia Stacey Van Vleet tells Inverse that - with the exception of a 30-year period from 1950 to 1980 when the oil industry brought an influx of Chinese workers - the region around Lenghu is sparsely populated. How much work such a law will actually do is uncertain, given the region’s historical emptiness. ![]() Deng notes that the local government of Lenghu has enacted a law limiting development around the site to ensure the dark skies are protected going forward. The scientists can control how dark the site is - light pollution is a human-created problem. However, he notes that “more testing needs to be continued to make sure that there are no unexpected long-term trends.” “The site survey is well done, and the current data are reliable,” University of California, Berkeley, astronomer Alex Filippenko tells Inverse. They found conditions at the site to be very similar to Mauna Kea, although they noted Lenghu’s lower humidity might make the site a better location for infrared telescope observations.Ī panoramic view of Saishiteng Mountain, near the town of Lenghu, in China. The stability of the air, which depends in part on overnight temperature variationĪll of these factors have a bearing on how much quality observation time a site will see and the overall quality of those observations.How many clear nights the site sees each year.What they found - The stargazing from Saishiteng Mountain is obviously good, even to the untrained observer, with stars shining fiercely through the calm, thin air, and the arc of the Milky Way easily visible to the naked eye, according to Deng.īut he and his colleagues needed to quantify just how well the site would stack up against the elite western observatories. ![]() Once constructed, the observatory complex will constitute the first elite sky-gazing site in the Eastern hemisphere. It is essentially a scientific stamp of approval for the telescope construction projects already underway at Lenghu. ![]() That’s the conclusion of Deng’s study of the site, published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Camping there at night, Deng says, is a gamble - the temperatures are so cold that it is difficult, even with the best equipment, to stay warm.īut the same thin air that makes the site inhospitable to camping scientists also makes it ideal for peering into the heavens. The site, which sits 4,200 meters above sea level on the Saishiteng Mountain near the town of Lenghu, is “so quiet that sometimes in the night you can hear your own heartbeat,” Deng tells Inverse. That’s how Chinese astronomer Licai Deng describes the site on the Tibetan Plateau he and his colleague spent three years investigating as a possible location for large telescopes similar to those currently operating from Mauna Kea, in Hawaii, and Cerro Paranal, in Chile.
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