Amateur observatory makes its way to the big league

Four asteroids were named after astronomers at the Xingming Observatory based in Nanjing, east China’s Jiangsu province, by the International Astronomical Union on May 14, 2021.

Among them, the asteroid (546843) “Xuzhijian” was named after its discoverer Xu Zhijian, an amateur astronomer in Nanjing. According to sources, it takes the asteroid about 3.45 years to revolve around the Sun, with a semi-major axis of 2.285 astronomical units (AU).

Photo shows Xu Zhijian, a co-founder of the Xingming Observatory, an amateur observatory based in Urumqi, the capital city of northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. (Photo provided by the interviewee)

Xu has made several astronomical discoveries, including 14 supernovas, three extragalactic ones, and more than 300 SOHO comets. Born in 1989, Xu is currently a postgraduate student at the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Xu developed an interest in astronomy when he was a middle school student. In 2007, he and several other astronomy enthusiasts founded the Xingming Observatory, and began looking for asteroids and supernovas using very basic equipment.

Based in a location about 100 kilometers from Urumqi, the capital city of northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the Xingming Observatory is in part engaged in establishing partnerships with professional organizations and researchers by offering observational data to the latter and becoming co-authors of research papers. It has also launched science popularization projects with the aim of inviting more people to take part in astronomy projects.

In July 2015, the National Astronomical Observatories under CAS, together with the Xingming Observatory, initiated a program that aims to invite astronomy enthusiasts to look for supernovas and spread astronomical knowledge.

One of the program’s strengths is that it does more to popularize science than professional observatories, and produces more scientific research outcomes than amateur observatories.

More than 100,000 people have participated in program, some of whom have made their own astronomical discoveries. But according to Gao Xing, a co-founder of the Xingming Observatory, one of the key purposes of the program is to encourage more people to take part in it.

Photo shows a picture of the orbit of the asteroid named after Xu Zhijian. (Photo provided by the interviewee)

Jiang Xinyu, from the School of Astronautics with Northwestern Polytechnical University based in Xi’an, northwest China’s Shaanxi province, joined the program in 2017, before she had been admitted by the university. To date, she has discovered two supernovas and a new star.

Jiang said she had watched 40,000 to 50,000 pictures of galaxies before she finally identified the stars. She also manages the media platforms of the Xingming Observatory. “I think it would be great to engage in planetary exploration after graduation,” said Jiang.

The Xingming Observatory has launched other programs, including exploration of comets and a space observatory project that uses wide field-of-view telescopes. By March 14, 2021, the Observatory had discovered three comets, seven asteroids, a bright red star, a nova in the Milky Way and 52 supernovas, among others.

Gao Xing, who is also a physics teacher at a local middle school in Urumqi, is responsible for maintaining and upgrading the equipment at the observatory. “I’m kind of a technical supporter for the observatory projects, and because of this, my teammates always give me credit for my role in their discoveries,” Gao said.

Some of the equipment at the observatory is now aging after being in service for more than 10 years, but Gao is not worried about this. “We don’t necessarily need the best equipment to achieve scientific results, and because we have made so many discoveries, we’ve shifted our focus to doing things no one has done before and making full use of what equipment we now have,” Gao explained.

The Xingming Observatory maintains sound relationships with professional astronomy research institutions and holds frequent interactions with the public, making it the only one of its kind in China and one that is rarely seen in the world.

In addition, several of the Observatory’s members have gone on to become professional researchers, including Xu Zhijian. Gao Xing said he is quite proud of this, adding that the Observatory’s discoveries rank first in the country, and are very influential globally.

“With clear scientific purposes, the Observatory has gathered together a large number of astronomy enthusiasts. I think its operational mode is unparalleled around the world,” said Fan Dongwei with the National Astronomical Observatories.