The structure of the world ’s big radio scope , which is being installed in China ’s Guizhou province , has introduce its final microscope stage . As the name suggests , the Five hundred - meter Aperture Spherical Telescope ( FAST ) will use a reflector dish that is 500 meters ( 1,640 foot ) long to look out for signal pass off from radio sources many light - years from home , as report byBusiness Standard .
The last stage of construction imply the “ retina , ” the collecting stop for the incoming wireless sign . It will be install in a cabin , a part of the telescope suspended up to 160 m ( 525 feet ) above a reflector made of 4,450 individual panel .
Each of these equilateral triangle - shape panels are controlled by cables fixed to the back of it , meaning each one can adjust its slant and stead in accordance with the source cabin . The entire system will be highly sensitive , with operator able to make unprecedentedly belittled allowance : The maximum error will be less than 1 centimeter ( 0.4 inches ) .
“ If you compare the fasting to an eye , then the provender source is its retina , ” said Sun Caihong , a chief technologist with the dissolute programme , as reported byBusiness Standard . “ All signals we call for finally come here . ”
structure has been ongoingsince March 2011 . Work on the reflector – a gigantic piece of equipment designed to concentre theincoming radio wavesinto the receiving antennae – is still extend through this final stage . Just this weekend , the 30 MT ( 33.1 ton ) retina cabin was successfully lifted above the reflecting dish aerial in a particularly precarious operation .
The hem in area is gratis from town and cities within a sphere of roughly five kilometers ( 3.1 miles ) , mean that there will be niggling radio wave interference for the telescope as it peer into space . Zheng Xiaonian , the deputy head of the National Astronomical Observatories under the Chinese Academy of Sciences , claims that FAST will be10 time more sensitivethan a similar observatory in Bonn , Germany .
When it finally does come online , it will overpower Puerto Rico ’s Arecibo Observatory – another tuner telescope – which is 305 meters ( 1001 feet ) in diameter . Designed to incur only radio set wave , the scope will help us study various cryptic space object include supernovae and whizz nursery .
Image credit : The old record - take for wireless telescope – the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico . Quazgaa / Wikimedia Commons ; CC BY 2.0
