Live up to expectations! China Sky Eye has discovered more than 240 pulsars
On November 4, the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences held a press conference to announce that China Sky Eye (FAST) has been operating stably and reliably since its acceptance in January this year. It has observed and served more than 5,200 aircraft hours in the past year, reaching the expected design goal of nearly 2 Times.
Up to now, FAST has discovered more than 240 pulsars, and more than 40 high-level papers have been published based on FAST data.
FAST's research results on fast radio bursts were published in the international scientific journal "Nature" in the early morning of the 5th.
In February of this year, the FAST team overcame the impact of the epidemic and officially launched the five "priority and major projects" selected by the scientific committee. Nearly 100 scientists began to use and process FAST scientific data.
"In April this year, the Time Allocation Committee began to solicit free application projects from the domestic astronomy community. So far, more than 170 applications have been received. The total application time is about 5,500 hours. Only 30% of the actual approved 1,500 machine hours can be supported. It can be seen that the FAST telescope observation time competition is quite fierce." said Chang Jin, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
FAST was completed in 2016. Its reflective surface area is equivalent to about 30 standard football fields. It is the most sensitive single-aperture radio telescope in the world. It greatly expands the field of vision of human beings and gives Chinese astronomers the opportunity to go to radio astronomy research. Forefront.
Chang Jin said that FAST's new design concept created a new model for building giant telescopes, breaking through the engineering limit of a traditional fully movable radio telescope with an aperture of approximately 100 meters, and also brought great technical challenges.
FAST's huge reflecting surface can actively adjust the shape in real time according to the position of the celestial body. The 30-ton feed cabin moves at an altitude of 140 meters and a range of 206 meters. All control accuracy must reach the millimeter level.
The huge engineering volume, ultra-high precision requirements and special working methods make FAST face unprecedented technical challenges.
To this end, the engineering team has carried out a series of technical researches to overcome many technical problems in the fields of mechanics, measurement, control, materials, and large-scale structures.
The engineering team has developed a steel cable with ultra-high fatigue resistance, which exceeds 2.5 times the relevant domestic and international standards; innovatively adopts a two-level adjustment mechanism composed of the world’s largest span flexible parallel robot and a rigid 6-degree-of-freedom parallel robot. The high-precision positioning of the feed source with a root-mean-square value of 10 mm; creatively integrates satellite positioning, inertial navigation, and total station measurement technologies to achieve all-weather, large-scale, high-precision, high-sampling rate feed support system dynamics measuring.
With the improvement of performance, the scientific potential of FAST gradually emerged.
"The sensitivity of FAST is more than 2.5 times that of the world's second largest single-aperture radio telescope. This is the first time that a radio telescope built by China has occupied the world's commanding heights on the important indicator of sensitivity. It is important for promoting China's astronomy to achieve major original breakthroughs. Significance." Jiang Peng, executive deputy director and chief engineer of the FAST Operation and Development Center, said that the ultra-high sensitivity makes it a great potential for radio transient sources. It is expected to realize the detection of gravitational waves in the nanohertz and capture the universe in a short time. The primordial gravitational wave during the explosion period provides data support for studying the physical process at the primordial moment of the Big Bang.
At the same time, FAST has the ability to extend my country's deep space exploration and communication capabilities to the edge of the solar system to meet major national strategic needs.
China SkyEye FAST is a giant radio telescope that was conceived in the 1990s by the people’s scientist and model of the times, Mr. Nan Rendong. It took more than 20 years to build a giant radio telescope. Hundreds of scientific researchers from four generations went forward and later paid for the construction and commissioning of FAST. Great effort.
Our reporter Lu Chengkuan