China gives global access to world’s largest radio telescope
Following the collapse of the historic Arecibo Observatory telescope in Puerto Rico, China has opened the biggest radio telescope in the world up to international scientists. In Pingtang, Guizhou, stands the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), the largest radio telescope in the world, surpassing the Arecibo Telescope, which stood as the largest in the world for 53 years before the construction of FAST was completed in 2016. Following two cable failures in 2020, the Arebico Telescope collapsed in December 2020, shutting down the telescope for good. Now FAST is opening its doors to astronomers from around the world.
“Our scientific committee aims to make FAST increasingly open to the international community,” Wang Qiming, the chief inspector of FAST’s operations and development centre said. China will accept requests through 2021 from foreign scientists looking to use the instrument for their research.
With its massive 500-metre diameter dish, FAST is not only larger than the now-destroyed Arecibo telescope, but it’s also three-times more sensitive. FAST, which began full operations in January of this year, is also surrounded by a three-mile ‘radio silence’ zone in which mobile phones and computers are not allowed.
Radio telescopes like FAST use antennae and radio receivers to detect radio waves from radio sources in the cosmos, such as stars, galaxies and black holes.