GUIYANG, July 23 (Xinhua) — Technicians began assembling the world’s largest radio telescope, whose dish is the size of 30 football grounds, deep in the mountains of southwest China’s Guizhou Province on Thursday.
In the afternoon, technicians began to assemble the telescope’s reflector, which is 500 meters in diameter and made up of 4,450 panels. Each panel is an equilateral triangle with a side length of 11 meters.
Once completed, the single-aperture spherical telescope called “FAST” will be the world’s largest, overtaking Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory, which is 300 meters in diameter.
Nan Rendong, chief scientist of the FAST project with the National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Xinhua that the bigger the dish is, the more capable the telescope is and the weaker messages it will receive.
“A radio telescope is like a sensitive ear, listening to tell meaningful radio messages from white noise in the universe. It is like identifying the sound of cicadas in a thunderstorm,” he said.
With a perimeter of about 1.6 km, it will take about 40 minutes to walk around the telescope.
The giant dish is built upon a naturally-formed bowl-like valley in the southern part of Guizhou.
“There are three hills about 500 meters away from one another, creating a valley that is perfect to support the telescope,” said Sun Caihong, chief engineer of FAST’s construction, explaining the reason why this site was chosen.