China’s largest radio telescope, known as the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) is situated in a vast, secluded natural basin in Pingtang County, Guizhou Province, in the southwestern part of China. Locals affectionately refer to it as “Tianyan,” which translates to “the eye of heaven“.
China’s endeavor to construct its own radio telescope received approval from the China National Development and Reform Commission in 2007. Following 12 years of geological surveys and careful selection from over 1000 potential sites, the technology team settled on the Dawadang depression in Guizhou. Groundbreaking occurred on March 5, 2011, and the entire project, costing approximately 667 million CNY, was completed in five and a half years.
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The primary objective of FAST is to investigate pulsars, which are rotating neutron stars. Pulsars are among the densest celestial bodies, formed from the gravitational collapse of massive stars and squeezing about 1.4 times the mass of the Sun into a sphere only 12 miles wide. On Earth, a teaspoon of material from a neutron star would weigh over 1 billion tons. Additionally, like many astronomical projects created by humans, FAST aims to detect signals of interstellar communication from intelligent beings, essentially searching for alien signals within the universe. Another key aim of FAST is to detect gravitational waves.
Here are 6 fascinating facts about the FAST that you should know:
- FAST is designed solely for receiving signals from the universe and does not transmit any signals.
- The massive 500-meter dish of FAST is constructed using 4,500 triangular aluminum panels.
- The combined area of all the dish panels of FAST is equivalent to 30 football fields.
- During observations, the telescope’s dish can be precisely tilted to receive signals from various directions in the universe.
- When tilted, the effective area of the dish that can receive signals is approximately 300 meters wide, indicating that not the entire dish area is utilized continuously during operations.
- The entire FAST project covers an area of 300 hectares.
Furthermore, FAST holds the distinction of being the world’s largest and most powerful single-antenna radio telescope to date. In terms of sensitivity, it surpasses the German Bonn telescope by tenfold. Additionally, when compared to the Arecibo telescope in the United States, FAST boasts a comprehensive performance that is roughly ten times superior.
