On Jun. 23, the TMT expert (Thirty Meter Telescope) delegation, headed by Prof. Roger Falcone, director of the Department of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley paid a visit to Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry (TIPC), CAS. Prof. Suijian Xue, Project Manager of CTMT (China Thirty Meter Telescope) attended the meeting.

Prof. Pengfei Wang, Deputy Director of TIPC, showed welcome to the delegation and gave a brief introduction of TIPC. Yong Bo delivered a report entitled The Sodium Laser Prototype for TMT. Then the delegation visited the research center for Laser Physics and Technology and made a discussion about the detail of LGS technology with the researchers. Prof. Liqiang Liu introduced the design progress of large cryogenic engineering.

At the end of the meeting, TMT delegation expressed highly evaluation to the LGS progress of TIPC and wished to strengthen the cooperation with TIPC in TMT project. Prof. Xuesong Wang, Director of Division of Science and Technology, has taken the chair of the meeting.

The 30-meter aperture permits the telescope to focus more sharply than smaller telescopes by using the power of diffraction of light. The large aperture also collects more light than smaller scopes, allowing images of fainter objects. TMT will therefore reach further and see more clearly than previous telescopes by a factor of 10 to 100 depending on the observation.