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China's giant radio telescope is finally finished
The telescope, made up of 4,500 triangular aluminium panels, should come online by the end of the year.
China’s colossal Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (Fast) telescope has been completed and will now begin testing in southwestern China’s Guizhou Province.
The world's largest radio telescope was completed on September 25 and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Cas) has said it will now begin its 'debugging and testing stage' ahead of the official 'switch-on' later this year.
Fast features the world's largest aperture, at 500 metres, and has a total area equal to 30 football fields. It not only surpasses the Arecibo Observatory – once the world’s largest single-aperture telescope – in size, but also in sensitivity and overall performance.
Among the innovations is the adoption of an active, rather than passive, primary reflector. The dish is made up of reflectors that can be adjusted to account for signal deformation. This should result in a sensitivity twice that of Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Arecibo is limited to an observable area around 20° from the zenith: FAST, with its adjustable reflector, should achieve 40°.