The Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, which was the first Chinese university to set up an astronomy department in 1927, will relaunch the department later this year.

The university's astronomy department was merged into the Nanjing University in 1952.

The new department could be named the astronomy and space science institute.

The first two or three years of the institute will be devoted mainly to recruitment of teachers and researchers, said Li Miao, who will head the astronomy part of the institute.

Postgraduate student enrollment will start next year at the earliest and undergraduate student recruitment after 2015, Li said.