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A Thomson scattering diagnostic system is designed for Versatile Experiment Spherical Torus (VEST) to measure the spatial profiles of the electron temperature. The system is carefully designed to collect a sufficient number of photoelectrons and to reduce the noise sources, since relatively low electron densities and temperatures are expected in VEST due to the limited power capacity at present. The target electron temperature and the density are 10–200 eV and 5 × 10 18 m −3 , respectively which are extrapolated from the data of triple Langmuir probes measuring the edge plasma parameters at R = 0.75 m by assuming a parabolic density profile. The collecting optics is designed to have a wide-view angle and low cost by using a commercial photographic lens of low f-number and high transmittance optical fiber bundle. The bandwidths of the interference filters in the polychromator are designed for reliable measurements within the target electron temperature range. As a photo detector which is coupled with the filters, an avalanche photodiode (APD) with a low dark current and an adequate quantum efficiency near the laser wavelength is selected for the high signal-to-noise ratio. The number of photons transferred to the polychromator and the number of photoelectrons in the APD are calculated. At the commissioning phase, an oscilloscope with a high sampling rate will be adopted to check the necessity of the noise reduction by multi-shot signal accumulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]