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China is building the world's largest radio telescope to support it's deep space exploration in coming years.
https://www.facebook.com/ChinaSpace/...type=1&theater
World's largest radio telescope - a Five hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) is under construction in Guizhou. It will support China's deep space exploration in coming years.
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They've been building it for 5 years now...Originally Posted by selvaarchi
It's supposed to be practically finished by now.
Is there any detail other than a simple captioned picture?“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.
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This was their latest entry in "China space" in Facebook. It is supposed to be completed in Sept. 2016 according to CukWiki. link -
http://en.cukwiki.com/wiki/Five_hund...ical_Telescope
Reading more on it, this would be more suitable in the astronomy thread then space exploration (I misunderstood "support it's deep space exploration" as supporting it's probes further in the solar system.)
Last edited by selvaarchi; 2014-Jul-28 at 02:27 PM.
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An updated photograph of the Guizhou 500m spherical radio telescope under construction. You can see progress being made by the towers around the structures compared to the picture in post #1
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Link?
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sorry
https://www.facebook.com/ChinaSpace/...type=1&theater
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China is making progress to build the world's largest radio telescope (about twice as sensitive as the Arecibo Observatory). The the first of 4,450 reflection panels to be completed in May this year.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/ch..._133977588.htm
The company hoped to complete the first of 4,450 such panels in May, which are designed to be fixed on the telescope that has a diameter of 500 meters.
The telescope, under construction in China, is designed to be the world's largest and most sensitive radio telescope by completion.
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So not actually the worlds largest radio telescope then:
http://www.astronomy.com/news/2013/1...adio-telescope
Have you ever considering doing some fact checking before posting all of these Chinese PR tracts? Oh and they wiil have the first panels finished a year after the telescope was supposed to be operational?
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You are talking of a virtual telescope and not a single radio telescope. Last report I posted on it said that they were hoping for completion in 2016.
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They did say "designed to be" not "will be"
But, looking at the wikis for Arecibo, 500M telescope and Square Kilometer array, I get these numbers.
SKA 50x the sensitivity of Arecibo leaving 500M as 1/25 the sensitivity.
The 500M movable panels reduces the effective size to 300M which is the same as Arecibo.
Collecting areas:
Arecibo: ~70k Sq Meters
500M: ~200k Sq Meters
SKA: 1000k Sq meters
Clearly the claims for the 500M are wrong.
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China is making progress on the construction of their radio telescope. The just installed the "retina" of the telescope. It is where all the signals from the panels are collected. The telescope itself is still on schedule to be completed by September 2016.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20..._134840638.htm
Chinese scientists on Saturday tested the installation of the "retina" of the world's largest ever radio telescope to be completed in September next year.
Technicians lifted a 30-tonne feed cabin of the Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope - or FAST - above a half-finished dish-like reflector measuring 500 meters in diameter and 1.6 kilometers in perimeter.
Once completed, the cabin, home to a feed source which collects signals from the universe, will be suspended 140 to 160 meters above the reflector made up of 4,450 panels.
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Photos taken on April 10, 2016 shows the single-aperture spherical telescope "FAST" being constructed in Pingtang County, southwest China's Guizhou Province. 94.04 percent of the installation work has been completed and they expect completion this year.
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Andrew Jones who writes on Chinese space activities has come out with an article on the telescope. It has the latest pictures of the construction site.
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The Five hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) being constructed in China will have Australian technology. The telescope's 19-beam receiver, a key component, is being designed and built in Australia by CSIRO engineers.
http://www.csiro.au/en/News/News-rel...gest-telescope
Most radio telescopes use receivers that can only see one piece of sky at a time, but CSIRO has designed receivers with many separate, simultaneous beams, making it practical for FAST to search a large portion of the sky for faint and hidden galaxies.
“The powerful receiver we’ve created for FAST is the result of our long history developing cutting-edge astronomy technology to receive and amplify radio waves from space,” Acting Director CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science, Dr Douglas Bock said.
“Extending our technology and collaboration to China and working on what will become the world’s largest radio telescope really cements our position as a global R&D leader in this space."
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At last the construction has been completed and testing can begin
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20..._135485134.htm
More details in this report.Installation was completed on the world's largest radio telescope on Sunday morning as the last of 4,450 panels was fitted into the center of the big dish.
Hoisting of the last triangular panel to the reflector, which is the size of 30 football fields, began at 10:47 a.m. and lasted about 40 minutes. It was a landmark step for the telescope's planned launch of operations in September.
About 300 people, including builders, experts, science fiction enthusiasts and reporters, witnessed the installation at a karst valley in Pingtang County in the southwestern province of Guizhou.
Scientists will then begin debugging and trial observation of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), said Zheng Xiaonian, deputy head of the National Astronomical Observation under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which built the telescope.
The project has the potential to search for more strange objects to better understand the origin of the universe and boost the global hunt for extraterrestrial life, said Zheng.
Zheng said the radio telescope will be the global leader for the next 10 to 20 years.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20..._135485389.htm
Radio telescopes have made major astronomical discoveries, such as pulsars, quasars and cosmic microwave background radiation. Among the 10 Nobel Prizes in physics awarded for discoveries related to cosmology and space, six were attributed to radio telescopes.
"As the world's largest single aperture telescope located at an extremely radio-quiet site, its scientific impact on astronomy will be extraordinary, and it will certainly revolutionize other areas of the natural sciences," said Nan Rendong, chief scientist with the FAST Project.
FAST will enable astronomers to get a jump-start on many scientific goals, including surveying neutral hydrogen in distant galaxies and detecting faint pulsars.
Scientists also expect breakthroughs on pulsars, the highly magnetized, rotating neutron stars that emit a beam of electromagnetic radiation. So far more than 2,000 pulsars have been detected.
"Pulsars can help scientists study gravitational waves," Chen added.
As China joins international efforts in gravitational wave detection, FAST will help improve the chances of detecting low frequency gravitational waves, said Wu Xiangping, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who predicted great breakthroughs in this area in the years ahead.
Last edited by selvaarchi; 2016-Jul-03 at 10:32 AM.
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Q&A session with Zhu Ming, the chair of FAST Science Department at China's National Astronomical Observatories.
http://english.cctv.com/2016/07/03/V...U0160703.shtml
Q1. What role will FAST and China's other upcoming projects play in international efforts to further scientific research?
Q2. Will FAST pose any negative influences -- say, like radiation -- for the people living nearby? If so, has the project considered and taken any specific measures to prevent these?
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Another report on the completion of FAST and includes a 5 minute video on SETI.
http://www.space.com/33357-china-lar...lien-life.html
China has put the finishing touches on the world's biggest radio telescope, whose 1,650-foot-wide dish will scan the heavens for signs of intelligent alien life, among other tasks.
On Sunday (July 3), technicians installed the last of the 4,450 panels that make up the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope's (FAST) giant dish, China's state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
Project team members will soon begin testing and debugging FAST, after which Chinese scientists will use it for "early-stage research," Xinhua reported. But the instrument will be available to researchers around the world when that phase is over — likely two to three years from now.
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Article in Universe Today carries an article on FAST titled "Now, Witness The Power Of This Fully Operational Radio Telescope!"
http://www.universetoday.com/129769/...dio-telescope/
As part of China’s growing commitment to space exploration, the FAST telescope will spend the coming decades exploring space and assisting in the hunt for extraterrestrial life. And once it commences operations this coming September, the Chinese expect it will remain the global leader in radio astronomy for the next ten or twenty years.
In addition to being larger than the Arecibo Observatory (which measures 305 meters in diameter), the telescope is reportedly 10 times more sensitive than its closest competitor – the steerable 100-meter telescope near Bonn, Germany. What’s more, unlike Arecibo (which has a fixed spherical curvature), FAST is capable of forming a parabolic mirror. That will allow researchers a greater degree of flexibility.
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I love that title!
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China's massive Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) will begin searching the skies for phenomena including signs of extraterrestrial life at the end of September.
http://gbtimes.com/china/worlds-larg...-end-september
Construction of the 1.2 billion yuan (US$185m) radio telescope began in 2011 and boasts a collecting area of 196,000 square metres, consisting of adjustable 4,450 panels.
Viewing the universe by collecting radio frequency radiation, FAST will be capable of detecting very weak signals from space, and could make contributions in areas such as large-scale physics of the universe and understanding the nature of dark matter.
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Congratulations China
The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope's (FAST) mission to explore space and hunt for extraterrestrial life is now operational.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20..._135712337.htm
The world's largest radio telescope was put into use on Sunday in a mountainous region of southwest China's Guizhou Province.
Shortly after noon, in a karst valley in Pingtang County, hundreds of astronomers and astronomy enthusiasts witnessed the official launch of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope's (FAST) mission to explore space and hunt for extraterrestrial life.
Work on the nearly 1.2-billion-yuan (180 million U.S. dollars) project started in 2011, 17 years after it was proposed by Chinese astronomers.
The installation of the telescope's main structure -- a 4,450-panel reflector as large as 30 football pitches -- was finished in early July.
"(The telescope) will certainly generate enthusiasm, bring people into science, and make China important in the world of science," Joseph Taylor, a Nobel Prize-winning astronomer at Princeton University, told Xinhua.
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Some lovely pictures of FAST and the surrounding areas. Also what China is doing to help the people relocated because of the project.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20..._135712657.htm
To ensure the telescope's performance, more than 8,000 locals are being resettled from their homes to make way for the project, which requires radio silence within a 5-kilometer radius. Visitors to the zone must turn off their mobile phones.
A relocation budget of about 1.8 billion yuan has come from the poverty relief fund and bank loans. Over 600 apartments have been built in two new settlements, about 10 kilometers from their original homes.
The villagers will be compensated in cash or with new housing. Those who lost their land will also be compensated. They will be offered jobs in tourism and support services for the FAST project.
The local government hopes to develop tourism by cashing in on the buzz surrounding the telescope.
Starting from Monday, the "scenic zone" around FAST will be open to tourists on a trial basis, according to the tourism bureau of Pingtang County.
During the trial opening, a daily ceiling of 2,000 tourists, at a ticket price of 368 yuan each, will be allowed to visit an observation deck built at the top of a mountain nearby to observe FAST.
The zone will also feature a 300-hectare telescope-themed "cultural park." The park, located more than 5 kilometers from FAST in Pingtang's Kedu Township, includes a 5,000-square-meter planetarium to provide an interactive experience.
"I believe the planetarium will be a hot destination for tourism and education for the popularization of science," said Zhang Liyun, an associate professor of astronomy at Guizhou University.
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More technical details of FAST.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/...-listen-aliens
In a stunning landscape of jagged limestone hills in southwestern China, engineers are putting the finishing touches on a grand astronomy facility: a half-kilometer-wide dish nestled in a natural depression that will gather radio signals from the cosmos. The world’s largest radio telescope will catalog pulsars; probe gravitational waves, dark matter, and fast radio bursts; and listen for transmissions from alien civilizations.
Yet the architect of the tour de force is blasé about what his telescope might capture. “I’m really not very interested in science, I’m sorry to say,” says Nan Rendong, chief scientist and chief engineer of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) here. Colleagues insist he is joking, but there is no question that what has consumed 2 decades of his life— and is now wowing other astronomers—is engineering. “As a civil engineering feat, FAST is obviously amazing,” says Fred Lo, former director of the U.S. National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Charlottesville, Virginia.
It is not just FAST’s sheer size—it has more than twice the collecting area of the runner-up, the 305-meter dish in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. FAST is also breaking new ground in radio astronomy with a design that pulls a section of the spherical dish into a gradually moving paraboloid to aim at and track cosmic objects as Earth rotates, bringing the benefits of a tilting, turning antenna to a fixed dish. This innovation “is absolutely unique, nobody has ever done this before,” says Dick Manchester, a radio astronomer at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Sydney.
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Now FAST has been roped in to search for for extraterrestrial life.
http://www.popsci.com/worlds-biggest...ins-alien-hunt
The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in southwest China still has that 'new telescope' smell, having completed construction in July. It was meant to be an alien eavesdropper from the start, with its directors claiming the "potential to discover an alien civilization will be five to 10 times that of current equipment." FAST joins Breakthrough's roster of research telescopes and devices, including the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, the Parkes Observatory in New South Wales, Australia, and the Automated Planet Finder at Lick Observatory in California.
FAST is not only a powerful telescope in its own right — its giant 1,640 ft (500 m) dish can detect very weak radio signals and conduct sensitive surveys of the galactic plane and perhaps the whole sky — but will serve as a follow-up facility for weak detections at other sites, according to Andrew Siemion, who is involved with Breakthrough Listen and director of Berkeley's SETI Research Center.
The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in southwest China still has that 'new telescope' smell, having completed construction in July. It was meant to be an alien eavesdropper from the start, with its directors claiming the "potential to discover an alien civilization will be five to 10 times that of current equipment." FAST joins Breakthrough's roster of research telescopes and devices, including the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, the Parkes Observatory in New South Wales, Australia, and the Automated Planet Finder at Lick Observatory in California.
FAST is not only a powerful telescope in its own right — its giant 1,640 ft (500 m) dish can detect very weak radio signals and conduct sensitive surveys of the galactic plane and perhaps the whole sky — but will serve as a follow-up facility for weak detections at other sites, according to Andrew Siemion, who is involved with Breakthrough Listen and director of Berkeley's SETI Research Center.
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The radio telescope is still undergoing debugging and move to trial operations later this year.
http://gbtimes.com/china/chinas-500m...ial-operations
China's 500-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) will commence trial operations in the latter half of 2017, according to a provincial official.
The giant project came online in September last year and is currently undergoing debugging, according to Liao Fei, head of the Guizhou Provincial Department of Science and Technology and a deputy to the 12th National People's Congress (NPC), part of China's ongoing annual parliamentary sessions in Beijing.
"We have been in contact with the National Astronomical Observatory of China. Internationally, the similar giant radio devices need about two to five years in a debugging stage. Due to the associated complexity of scientific engineering, FAST will need about two years to accomplish its debugging,” Liao told CCTV.
Liao added that the giant facility will commence trial operations towards the second half of 2017, and is expected to pass a final acceptance check within two years.
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See a two and a half minute preview of Science Channel's next "Impossible Engineering". The subject is the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope [FAST] and it premieres on March 30, 2017 on a TV near you.
http://www.space.com/36035-enormous-...adline+Feed%29
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FAST is now a tourist attraction.
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/nation/.../shdaily.shtml
IT is the quietest tourist site in China — phones, cameras and cars are not allowed. Even planes have been rerouted to avoid disturbance, but it still draws thousands of tourists.
Since it began operating in September last year, the world’s largest radio telescope, in southwest China’s Guizhou Province, has received 240,000 tourists, local authorities said.
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One of the things I noticed about FAST is that sunlight glints off the panels a bit differently for each one--it reminds me of the aztec panels on the refit Enterprise from The Motion Picture
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FAST discovers two pulsars during trial operation.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20..._136669827.htm
Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope, was completed in September 2016. (Xinhua/Jin Liwang)
BEIJING, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- After one year of trial operation, China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, has identified multiple pulsars, the National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC) said Tuesday.
It was the first time a radio telescope independently developed by Chinese scientists has found pulsars.
Two of the pulsars, named J1859-01 and J1931-01, are 16,000 light years and 4,100 light years from Earth with rotation periods of 1.83 seconds and 0.59 seconds, respectively.
According to Li Di, chief scientist at the radio astronomy division of the NAOC, the two pulsars were discovered on Aug. 22 and 25 when FAST was drift-scanning the southern galactic plane. The discovery was later confirmed by the Parkes radio telescope in Australia in September.
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More on FAST and what it hopes to achieve.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20..._136682892.htm
One is rapid and strong, and the other is slow and weak, like the heartbeats of a youth and an old man passing through a distance of thousands of light years, and then heard by the most sensitive "ear" on Earth.
The "ear" is the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), the world's largest radio telescope, with a dish as large as 30 football fields. It is located in a valley deep in southwest China's mountainous Guizhou Province.
During the debugging and trial of the telescope since its completion in September 2016, FAST has detected dozens of pulsar candidates, six of them confirmed by telescopes in other countries. Chinese scientists produced a sound effect of the first two confirmed pulsars based on the observed signals, enabling ordinary people to hear the "heartbeats" deep in the universe.
The objectives of FAST include searching for pulsars, neutral hydrogen, interstellar molecules and signals from the extraterrestrial life.
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