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!