China's giant celestial eye
Contrary to what the name might suggest, it's not fast, it's big, or rather gigantic. FAST stands for "Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope", and it is currently the largest radio telescope in the world. It started operations in China in 2016. The huge dish can be used to detect and study a variety of radio sources, including interstellar matter, galaxies, jets, pulsars and the vicinity of black holes.
We are approaching a giant of astronomy. The approximately two and a half hour drive from Guiyang to FAST, the "Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope", goes over a well-developed highway through an industrially relatively undeveloped area of China. The location has been carefully selected, because the colossus among radio telescopes is intended to pick up signals of cosmic origin and not interference radiation made by humans. The valley, in which FAST was embedded quite precisely, is a natural landscape form of the region there. The setting is similar to that of Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. This is no coincidence, because FAST has a lot in common with the Arecibo telescope there, which became known to the general public through Hollywood films such as "James Bond - Goldeneye" or "Contact". However, FAST differs in important details that only become clear when one recalls the characteristics of Arecibo…
