Some information about the existing institutions and facilities in astronomy in China and the new initiatives of larger projects for the coming years to the earlier few years of 21th century are briefly given in this paper.
The institutions working on astronomy in China includes five observatories, some departments of astronomy in universities and an instrument manufacture center. The majority of astronomers and facilities are working in the observatories managed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The Beijing Astronomical Observatory (BAO) is engaged in solar, stellar and galactic physic esearches. The 2.16m telescope, solar magnetic field telescope, 1.26m IR telescope and meter wave radio synthesis aperture telescope are installed in BAO. RWC Beijing of ISEC and WDC-D for Astronomy are managed by the BAO. The Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SAO) pays more attention to the studies on astro-geodynamics and astrometry. VLBI measurements, satellite and lunar ranging are adopted for the determination of the earth rotation patrameters. Two 25m dishes installed in SAO and Urumqi Astromical Station working as VLBI units of EVN. An 1.56m reflector is operated in SAO. Astronomers in the Purple Mountain Observatory (PMO) are mainly interested in the study of the solar system, molecular astronomy and theoretic astrophysics. A 13.6M mm-wave telescope of PMO is installed in the Qinghai plateau.The fine structure of the sun, rotation of stars, close binaries are the main fields in Yunnan Observatory. The group working on BL Lac objects is active. The astronomers are also interested in the studies on artifitial satellite dynamics, astrometry, solar radio eruption and the stellar structure. An 1m telescope is working in Kunming for Yunnan Observatory.
The institutions of astronomical educations are the department of astronomy of Nanjing University, the department of astronomy of Beijing Normal University and the section of department of geophysics of Peking University and the Center of Astrophysics of China Sci. and Tech. University. Almost no observation facility is installed in the universities. However the astronomers in the universities can apply observing time of the telescopes from the observatories on the basis of equlity competation.
The proposals on future astronomy facilities have been surveyed in China during the last several years. Among the others, the proposal of the Large Multi-Object Spectrascopy Telescope (LAMOST) was proved by the goverment as a national project in last year.
The LAMOST is a reflecting Schmidt telescope. The effective aperture is 4m. The FOV is about 5 degree giving a linear diameter 1.75m. About 4000 fibers could be attached to the focal surface so that it is expected spectra of 107 galaxis brighter than 20.5 magnitude could be observed in three years. The LAMOST project is scheduled to be completed and installed in BAO in 2004.
Proposals on the astronomy facilities in the early 21th century will be surveyed in China in this month.