China starts construction of a 110-meter-aperture omnidirectional movable radio telescope

China's 110-meter-aperture omnidirectional movable radio telescope project started construction in Qitai County, Xinjiang. The project is a major scientific and technological infrastructure in the field of astronomy in my country. After completion, it will build a world-class observation platform for cutting-edge fields such as gravitational waves, fast radio storms, black holes, dark matter, celestial bodies, and the origin of life.

This radio telescope was officially established in 2015 because it was built in Qitai, also called QiTai radio Telescope (QTT), with a construction period of 6 years. QTT is a major scientific and technological infrastructure comparable to "China's Sky Eye" FAST. The advantage of omnidirectional movement allows QTT to observe three-quarters of the sky area with extremely high sensitivity, covering the center of the Milky Way, which is highly concerned by the astronomical community, and 12 to the south. ° Day zone.

At present, the world's largest omnidirectional movable radio telescope has an antenna diameter of 100 meters. In Germany and the United States, China has not yet built a 100-meter-level omnidirectional movable radio telescope. Therefore, it is expected that after 6 years of construction, the QTT with a diameter of 110 meters will become the world's largest and most accurate 100-meter-scale omnidirectional movable radio telescope, and will be used for nanohertz gravitational waves, fast radio bursts, black holes, dark matter, and the universe. Explore and build a world-class observation platform in frontier fields such as the origin of life.

According to Chang Jin, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the National Astronomical Observatory, QTT is located in the hinterland of the Eurasian continent, and the networked observation can be connected to Europe in the west, the mainland in the east and the East Asia network in the east, greatly improving the overall sensitivity, and will improve the important layout of my country's deep space exploration and provide future More distant space activities, such as lunar exploration, Mars and asteroid exploration, and even more distant solar system marginal exploration, provide strong technical support and become an important supporting platform for space exploration.