China began work this week on the second phase of FAST, the world’s largest and most powerful single-dish radio telescope, Xinhua reports.
The first phase of the $180m project began in 2010, was completed in 2016 and commissioned after a three-year “tuning in” process (see further reading).
It is located in the remote south-western province of Guizhou, and comprises 4,450 aluminium panels that can be adjusted to focus on particular bits of the universe. The panels are moved by means of 2,300 steel wires that are connected to electrical motors.
The second phase will add a necklace of 24 adjustable dishes, each 40m across. They will be located about 5km from the central dish, and will create an array that mimics a single telescope with a 10km diameter.
This will allow the project to keep up with rival radio telescopes, such as the €1.3bn Square Kilometre Array Observatory, which takes up large areas of Australia and South Africa, and is due to begin amassing data between now and when it completes in 2029.
Enhancing resolution
Currently, FAST is the most sensitive radio telescope, but its resolution is less advanced than top-tier telescope arrays.
The addition of the extra dishes will enhance its resolution by a factor of 30, and will enable FAST to detect and analyse faint cosmic signals.
Among the cosmic events it will report back on are fast radio bursts and gravitational wave events, pulsars, hydrogen galaxies and exoplanetary systems.
Jiang Peng, director of the FAST Operation and Development Centre, said the upgrade would give dishes the ability to locate the exact spot of a fast radio burst in the universe.
Since its completion in 2016, FAST has identified more than 900 pulsars, which are suns that have collapsed into neutron stars and are emitting regular bursts of energy.
This is more than three times the number of pulsars found by non-Chinese telescopes during the period.
The project is due to be completed in 2027.
Subscribe here to get stories about construction around the world in your inbox three times a week
