The world’s largest single-dish radio observatory officially opened for operations on January 11, 2020, ushering in an era of exquisitely sensitive observations that could help in the hunt for gravitational waves and probe the mysterious fleeting blasts of radiation known as fast radio bursts.
The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) in southern China has double the collecting power of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which has a 305 meter dish. Until now, Arecibo was the world’s largest radio dish of its type.
The radio telescope is made up of 4,450 individual panels and is cradled in a natural basin called the Dawodang depression in Guizhou, Southwest China. It’s a fixed 500 meter dish that can’t be aimed, and it’s not only the world’s most sensitive listening device, but the world’s largest filled-aperture radio-telescope.
