Space & Astronomy

China completes world's largest telescope

By T.K. Randall
July 4, 2016

Image Credit: (PD) NASA/ESA/ESO/Wolfram Freudling et al via Wikimedia Commons Situated in southwest China's Guizhou Province, the 500m-wide Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) cost $180 million to build and is around the size of 30 football pitches.

The enormous telescope is almost twice as large as the current record holder - Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory - and is ten times more sensitive than Germany's Effelsberg telescope.

It is set to begin operations from the beginning of September.

"The project has the potential to search for more strange objects to better understand the origin of the universe and boost the global hunt for extraterrestrial life," said Zheng Xiaonian, deputy head of the National Astonomical Observation under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.


Source: Telegraph

Tags: FAST, China, Telescope