The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) announced on Sept. 27 that the Daocheng Solar Radio Telescope, located in southwest China, passed all key tests with flying colors, marking the official completion of the world’s largest synthesis aperture radio telescope.
Among other capabilities, it will provide high-quality observation data for solar physics and space weather research. It will also aid research into monitoring and early warning methods for incoming asteroids, fast radio bursts and pulsars.
The facility comprises 313 radio dishes, each with a diameter of 6 meters, and arrayed in a circle with a diameter of 1 km (circumference of 3.14 km).
The CAS Newsletter in October 2023 printed a Xinhua report that: “The testing showed that the telescope array had achieved continuous and stable solar radio imaging and spectrum observation capabilities with a maximum field of view of 10 solar radii, and all technical indicators met or exceeded design requirements. A solar radius is a unit of distance in astronomy equal to the current radius of the Sun, approximately 695,500 km.”
