LAMOSTGalactic spectroscopicsurveys

The Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST, also named the Guo Shou-Jing Telescope) is an innovative quasi-median reflective Schmidt telescope with an effective aperture of 4 m. It is equipped with 16 spectrographs fed by 4000 optical fibers distributed in a field of view of 20 sq.deg. The spectral range covers the optical wavelengths from 370 —910 nm at a resolving power of 1800. The LAMOST Galactic survey was initiated in the fall of 2012. It is expected to collect over 7 million spectra over a five-year period. So far, over 3 million spectra have been collected. In this article, I will briefly review the importance and current status of studies on our Milky Way Galaxy, and then present an overview of the scientific motivation,target selection, survey progress, and data collection and reduction, as well as the early scientific results and future prospects of the surveys.