The observatory is built on a rocky area called Hòn Chồng in Khánh Hòa Province’s Nha Trang City. It is in the finishing stage and will be ready by the Tết holiday (Lunar New Year) in late January for a pilot run before the official opening scheduled in March next year.

VNSC Director Phạm Anh Tuấn said a space telescope, 0.5m in diameter, will be installed inside a dome that is 9m in diameter. The dome can accommodate up to 60 people who come to observe space or watch movies about planets, stars and the history of the Earth.

The Hòn Chồng observatory is one of the two observatory projects in Vietnam, costing a total of VNĐ120 billion (US$5.3 million). The other one was under construction inside the Vietnam Space Museum in Hanoi’s Hòa Lạc High-Tech Park.

Both the observatory and the museum will open for visitors in mid 2018.

The two observatories and the museum are part of the VNSC project – the largest national scientific project in the country, so far, with investment reaching $600 million.