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posted by takyon on Monday July 04 2016, @02:38PM   Printer-friendly
from the aperture-gap dept.

China Builds World's Largest Radiotelescope

According to 9news, construction of the world's largest radiotelescope has been completed. Situated in a hollow in the mountains of China's Guizhou province, the structure includes a 500 m reflector, hence its name Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST). Unlike the Arecibo telescope, the shape of the reflector can be changed. The receiver was built by the CSIRO.

China's Big Telescope

Reuters reports:

China on Sunday hoisted the final piece into position on what will be the world's largest radio telescope, which it will use to explore space and help in the hunt for extraterrestrial life, state media said.

The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, is the size of 30 football fields and has been hewed out of a mountain in the poor southwestern province of Guizhou.

Scientists will now start debugging and trials of the telescope, Zheng Xiaonian, deputy head of the National Astronomical Observation under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which built the telescope, told the official Xinhua news agency.

"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," the report paraphrased Zheng as saying.


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China Still Has Trouble Staffing the World's Largest Radio Telescope 15 comments

China still having trouble staffing up its mega-telescope

China has built a staggeringly large radio telescope in a remote part of the country, and, although it is the largest and most advanced instrument of its kind in the world, the country continues to have a difficult time staffing up the observatory.

Not only has the 500-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST instrument, still failed to attract a chief scientist, according to the South China Morning Post the facility is also struggling to attract two dozen researchers to work onsite to maintain the instrument and analyze data collected there.

One problem is pay. According to the Post, astronomers interested in joining working there should speak fluent English and expect to work in the remote location on a long-term basis. (The telescope is located in southwest China's mountainous Guizhou Province.) Compensation for the job is meager, at least by Western standards—about 100,000 yuan, or $14,400 annually.

Previously: China Announces Petascale Supercomputer for FAST Radiotelescope
China Builds World's Largest Radiotelescope
China Begins Operating World's Largest Radio Telescope
China Can't Find Anyone Smart Enough to Run its Whizzbang $180M 500 Meter Radio Telescope

Related: Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory Saved From Uncertain Fate


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  • (Score: 1) by g2 In The Desert on Monday July 04 2016, @03:23PM

    by g2 In The Desert (3773) on Monday July 04 2016, @03:23PM (#369598)

    At 500m, that's huge.

    But is a single 500m reflector larger than the 27 - 25 meter dished of the https://www.nrao.edu/pr/2000/vla20/background/vlafacts [nrao.edu]Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico that can be spread over 36km ?

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 04 2016, @04:03PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 04 2016, @04:03PM (#369618)

      Depends on what you are after. If you are after high angular resolution, then the VLA is much better. If you are after low amplitude detection, the VLA has a total collection area of 27 * (25m)^2 * pi = 5.3 ha, while the single 500m reflector has a total collection area of (500m)^2 * pi = 78.5 ha, which is almost 15 times as much.

      • (Score: 5, Informative) by frojack on Monday July 04 2016, @05:29PM

        by frojack (1554) on Monday July 04 2016, @05:29PM (#369663) Journal

        Depends on what you are after. If you are after high angular resolution, then the VLA is much better. If you are after low amplitude detection, the VLA has a total collection area of 27 * (25m)^2 * pi = 5.3 ha, while the single 500m reflector has a total collection area of (500m)^2 * pi = 78.5 ha, which is almost 15 times as much.

        Like the much smaller The Arecibo Observatory (305meter) the limited steer-ability of the FAST radio telescope is limited by its design. You might not have all 78ha available for your intended target, and your reception time is much more limited as well.

        There's been an off and on debate about whether Arecibo is actually worth the maintenance cost, its been slowly de-funded over the years, and its continuation is far from assured.

        Still FAST is BIG and should capture a lot of energy.

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        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 04 2016, @08:08PM

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday July 04 2016, @08:08PM (#369746)

          So, I get why you would want a parabolic reflector, but what's the point of a spherical reflector when the energy is coming from far away?

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          • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 04 2016, @08:42PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 04 2016, @08:42PM (#369760)

            A parabolic reflector must be rotated to face the target, while a spherical reflector can be left in place, with only the receiver moving. Since rotating a dish over about 100m is impractical, spherical reflectors are the only option for huge dishes like Arecibo and FAST.

            • (Score: 3, Informative) by butthurt on Monday July 04 2016, @09:05PM

              by butthurt (6141) on Monday July 04 2016, @09:05PM (#369769) Journal

              They seem to be saying that the FAST reflector can be formed into a parabolic shape, although only a 300 m diameter is usable that way;

              The construction of this system is aimed to build a 500 meter aperture active spherical reflector, which could realize to form a transient 300 meter parabolic dish under real time control.

              http://fast.bao.ac.cn/en/Active-reflector.html [bao.ac.cn]

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 04 2016, @05:26PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 04 2016, @05:26PM (#369659)

      Basically, the amount of light collected by a telescope depends on its area, and the angular resolution depends on its diameter. So a telescope with one large receptor collects more light energy than than one made up of multiple small receptors. But with multiple receptors we can build telescopes with a large diameter by spacing them out.

      Thus, this telescope will be able to detect fainter objects than the VLA (distinguishing between those objects and the background) due to its much larger area.

      However, the VLA will have higher resolution (distinguishing between objects that appear close to each other) due to its much larger diameter.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Monday July 04 2016, @05:57PM

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Monday July 04 2016, @05:57PM (#369687) Homepage
    Subject left deliberately ambiguous. And hopefully triggery too.
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