China News Service, Guiyang, September 24 (Zhou Yanling) The 500-meter spherical radio telescope (FAST), known as the "China Sky Eye", will celebrate its fifth anniversary on September 25, 2021.

In the past five years, what new skills has FAST “growth” and what “report card” has it produced?

　　In 1994, the famous Chinese astronomer Nan Rendong, known as the "Father of Sky Eyes," proposed to build the world's largest radio telescope on Chinese soil.

After 22 years of field investigation, scientific research, and project construction, on September 25, 2016, FAST with China's independent intellectual property rights was completed in Pingtang, Guizhou, officially starting the journey of exploring the sea of ​​stars.

　　On September 17, 2016, FAST, which was still being debugged, had successfully received a set of high-quality pulsar signals from the distant universe.

This group of signals is the electromagnetic wave signal with the highest sexual-to-noise ratio received after FAST is put into trial observation.

　　In August 2017, FAST discovered 2 new pulsars, about 4,100 light-years and 16,000 light-years away from the Earth. These are the first new pulsars discovered by the Chinese Radio Telescope.

　　Pulsars are rotating neutron stars produced by stellar evolution and supernova explosions. Because of their extremely stable rotation period, pulsars are ideal tools for major scientific and technological applications such as the detection of gravitational waves and spacecraft navigation.

As the most sensitive radio telescope in the world, FAST is equipped with 19-beam L-band receivers and has accumulated more than 370 pulsars.

　　In August 2019, FAST timely captured the extremely active outbreak period of the FRB121102 fast radio storm.

Up to now, FAST has found 6 cases of rapid radio bursts, including one case of repeated bursts, which has achieved zero breakthroughs in the field of rapid radio burst detection by Chinese equipment.

　　From 0:00 on March 31, 2021, FAST began to accept observation applications from global astronomers and officially opened to the world. It has received more than 200 project applications from around the world. Observation competition is fierce, and it is difficult to obtain a “measurement”.

　　In August 2021, based on the FAST telescope, the team of Professor Keping Qiu from the School of Astronomy and Space Sciences of Nanjing University discovered a neutral hydrogen structure with a length of 5 kpc at a distance of 22 kpc (1 kpc is about 3262 light years) from the center of the galaxy. , Named "Cattail" according to its shape.

According to analysis, this may be the longest and longest giant fiber structure in the Milky Way, or a new spiral arm.

　　With the help of FAST observations, the Chinese scientific research team has become the core research force in the field of international fast radio bursts. FAST has detected the world's largest sample of fast radio burst events and has become the world's most powerful pulsar search tool.

　　Relevant experts said that FAST has entered the "harvest period" of research results and will produce more and more significant scientific and technological achievements in the future.

　　With the further development of the scientific potential of FAST, Chang Jin, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that currently FAST generates about 20PB of scientific data every year, and has produced a series of major achievements through systematic, efficient and intelligent processing. , Including the top ten advancements in science in the world selected by the journals "Nature" and "Science" in 2020. In the future, we will continue to innovate and strive to build a new highland of astronomical science and technology in China and even the world.

　　As the location of FAST, Guizhou has not only played a good role as a "guardian" in the past five years, but also actively cooperated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences to build the Guizhou Radio Astronomy Observatory, China Sky Eye Joint Research Center, Guizhou Zhongke Astronomy Education and Advanced Technology Institutes and other institutions will further strengthen the training and use of talents, and the transformation of scientific and technological achievements, so as to better serve the "China Sky Eye".

　　Yang Yongbin, vice chairman of the Guizhou Association for Science and Technology, said that every new discovery made by FAST will promote a better understanding of the universe. The young people's spirit of scientific inquiry into unknown fields.

　　In the future, FAST will conduct in-depth scientific research on fast radio bursts, neutral hydrogen spectrum surveys, and the discovery of extragalactic pulsars.

Many years ago, Mr. Nan Rendong often said: "The'China Sky Eye' is an attempt by Chinese astronomy to catch up to surpass. This attempt has just begun now."

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