The government of South Africa has approved plans to build a huge optical telescope to monitor other solar systems.

The minister for Arts Culture Science and Technology Lionel Mtshali said the telescope would be the largest of its kind in the Southern hemisphere and would put South Africa at the forefront of international astronomy for the next thirty years.

He said the government will contribute ten million dollars towards the project and the rest will come fromforeign investors.

South Africa is already home to the biggest optical telescope in Africa.

The new telescope will be twenty times as powerful and will be able to detect starts one billion times dimmer than those visible to the naked eye.