The world's most sensitive telescope after 4 years of space exploration

With extremely high sensitivity, the FAST radio telescope has helped scientists detect a large number of pulsars and radio signals.

China's 500m aperture spherical radio telescope.

Nestled among the limestone mountains in southwestern China's Guizhou province, the 500 m aperture spherical radio telescope (FAST), also known as the Tian Eye, began making its first discoveries in August 2017 by the discovery of two new pulsars 4,100 and 16,000 light-years away. After a period of trial operation, the giant instrument officially went into full operation in January 2020 and is recognized as the world's most sensitive radio telescope.

In a new post on December 15, China's official news agency Xinhua said that FAST had helped scientists identify more than 500 new pulsars since October 2017.

Pulsed stars are rapidly rotating neutron stars, formed from the collapsed cores of massive dead stars through a supernova event. With their dense matter density and fast rotational speed, they are ideal for studying the laws of physics in extreme environments.

Using FAST, the scientists also detected a total of 1,652 independent explosions from a single repeating fast radio burst (FRB) source, codenamed FRB121102.

According to Li Di from the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, FAST's lead scientist, this is the largest set of FRB events ever detected in history, these results have published in the journal Nature in October. Astronomers believe it could help unravel the origin of so-called "mysterious signals from deep space".

Since March 2021, when FAST officially opened to international projects, China's most sensitive telescope in the world has received about 200 applications for observations from 16 countries around the world.