China Building Huge 500-Meter Radio Telescope

By Nancy Atkinson - January 31, 2009 at 7:47 AM UTC | Telescopes
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Official ground-breaking ceremonies took place for a gigantic new 500 meter diameter radio telescope in China which will allow astronomers to detect galaxies and pulsars at unprecedented distances. The $102 million facility, known as the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), will have a collecting area more than twice as big as the 305 meter diameter radio telescope at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which has been the world's largest since it opened in 1964. Not only that, the new telescope will also have the ability to change its shape and move the position its focus.

Like the Arecibo telescope, the new telescope will sit in a natural depression that already is close to the shape of the collecting surface, simplifying the support structure and shielding the telescope from stray human-generated radio waves. The location is quite remote, about 170 km by road from the Guizhou Province's provincial capital Guiyang, making it unusually radio-quiet, says Nan Rendong, FAST chief scientist and a researcher from the National Astronomical Observatories at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in an

article in Physicsworld.com.

The site's potential for long, uninterrupted observations — coupled with the telescope's huge size, which will give it twice the sensitivity of Arecibo — means that researchers there will be able to detect objects like weak, fast-period pulsars that are too faint to be measured accurately by smaller instruments. [caption id="attachment_24446" align="aligncenter" width="250" caption="Groundbreaking ceremonies for FAST. Credit: Physicsworld.com"]

[/caption] "The FAST science impact on astronomy will be extraordinary," Nan said, adding that although the telescope is located in China, once it is completed in 2014 it will be open to astronomers from around the world.

A system of motors attached to its 4600 panels will allow astronomers to change its shape from a sphere to a paraboloid, making it easier to move the position of the telescope's focus. This will allow the south-pointing telescope to cover a broad swathe of the sky — up to 40 degrees from its zenith, compared to the 20-degree-wide strip covered by Arecibo.

At first, however, the telescope will only be sensitive to low-frequency radio waves, less than 3 GHz. Arecibo's bandwidth, by contrast, stretches up to 10 GHz.

A planned second phase of construction will extend FAST's range to 5 GHz, but a date for the upgrade has not yet been set.

Source:

Physicsworld.com

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com