Chinese astronomers are helping develop technologies for what it is intended to be the world's biggest optical telescope.

The Thirty Meter Telescope, to be built at the summit of Hawaii's Mauna Koa volcano, is a $1.3 billion project led by California's public university system, the California Institute of Technology and the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy.

With a segmented primary mirror that's almost 100 feet (30 meters) long, the telescope will have nine times the collecting area of the largest optical telescope now in use, while its images will be three times sharper, organizers have said.

"The project will be an important milestone in the 400-year history of telescope development," said Xue Suijian, TMT project manager in the Chinese Academy of Sciences' National Astronomical Observatories.

The international cooperation, Xue said, enables Chinese astronomers "to stand with their most distinguished peers around the world" in building the next generation of optical/infrared telescopes for use in several areas of study - the early universe, planets outside of our solar system, dark energy, dark matter and assessment of the super-massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

"As a signed partner, China could share the rights of managing, operating and using this world-class instrument," Xue said.

Besides the Chinese academy, partners to the US and Canadian institutions leading the project include India's Department of Science and Technology and Japan's National Astronomical Observatory.

Design development of the TMT is ongoing, with construction scheduled to begin in 2014.

Hawaii's Board of Land and Natural Resources in April approved plans to build the telescope on the site of observatories operated by the University of Hawaii at Hilo. The state decision means the group managing the TMT is now free to negotiate a sublease for the land from the university.

The telescope will be designed to observe planets that orbit stars other than the sun and allow astronomers to watch new planets and stars being formed. The TMT should also enable scientists to see about 13 billion light-years away for a view of the early years of the universe.

According to China's National Astronomical Observatories, the telescope's 30-meter aperture and "integrated wide-field adaptive optics" will combine unprecedented light-collection ability with minimal loss of image quality due to diffraction.

Henry Yang (Yang Zuyou), chancellor of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and chairman of the TMT board of directors, was in a delegation led by university system president Mark Yudof that met in Beijing with Chinese Vice-Premier Liu Yandong.

"The TMT project is a very good platform for international scientific cooperation, which China has participated in since 2009 and made inspiring technical achievements in," Liu said last month.

With government support, Chinese scientists have engaged in other recent international efforts to develop telescopes. One of these is the transfer of the KOSMA telescope from Switzerland to southwestern China under a 2009 agreement between several Chinese institutes and Germany's University of Cologne.

Chinese and German astronomers (KOSMA is an acronym formed by its full German name) are setting up the powerful, state-of-the-art equipment in the Tibet autonomous region at an altitude of 4,300 meters, making it the highest submillimeter-wave telescope in the Northern Hemisphere.

Testing of the 3-meter telescope is expected by the end of this year.

"It is China's first submillimeter-wave telescope that can perform regular astronomical observation and Tibet's first professional telescope," Wang Junjie, a member of the National Astronomical Observatories and the KOSMA project leader, was quoted as saying by Xinhua News Agency.

chenjia@chinadailyusa.com