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26th of September 2015
 
Visiting FAST, the 500-m Aperture Spherical Telescope in China
by George Hobbs (CASS)
On the 8th September 2015, George Hobbs (CSIRO) with Prof. Di Li and Ms Lei Zheng (NAOC) visited the site of the Five-hundred metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST). When complete (within a year from now) FAST will be largest single-dish radio telescope in the world. Currently the surface is being installed. Each panel consists of a mesh on a triangle frame. The sides of the triangles are 11m. 61 panels are therefore equivalent to the collecting area of the Parkes telescope. The FAST engineers are expecting soon to be installing 20 panels per day (i.e., a collecting area equivalent to Parkes every 3 days and that of MeerKAT every 9 days). There's no doubt that FAST will soon be an amazing telescope!


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