Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope

Uncommon card · No. 115792

The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST; Chinese: 五百米口径球面射电望远镜), nicknamed Tianyan (天眼, lit. "Sky's/Heaven's Eye"), is a radio telescope located in the Dawodang depression (大窝凼洼地), a natural basin in Pingtang County, Guizhou, southwestern China. FAST has a 500 m (1,640 ft) diameter dish constructed in a natural depression in the landscape. It is the world's largest single-dish telescope. It has a novel design, using an active surface made of 4,500 metal panels which form a moving parabola shape in real time. The cabin containing the feed antenna, suspended on cables above the dish, can move automatically by using winches to steer the instrument to receive signals from different directions. It observes at wavelengths of 10 cm to 4.3 m. Construction of FAST began in 2011. It observed first light in September 2016. After three years of testing and commissioning, it was declared fully operational on 11 January 2020. The telescope made its first discovery, of two new pulsars...

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