China plans on opening its 1600-foot telescope to the global scientific community on the 1st of April, as per the Global Times. The telescope has been dubbed the ‘Sky Eye’ and is the world’s largest Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), used for spotting pulsars and other energy-based astronomical targets. One of its primary purposes is to look for signs of alien life.
To access this novel piece of equipment, foreign scientists need to submit applications to China’s National Astronomical Observatories, according to China’s Xinhua news agency. After review, observation times will start being allotted after the 1st of August. Most of these observation times will still mostly be allotted to Chinese scientists but according to the project’s chief engineer, Jiang Peng, around 10% of observation times will be allotted to global astronomers this year.
The telescope was officially put into service last year. However, it started observations well before and has imaged around 240 pulsars according to some sources. The most significant of these was found in the Messier 92-star cluster.
China’s Sky Eye is the only one of its kind that can do specific types of observations following the collapse of the Arecibo Observatory radio telescope in Puerto Rico. The US National Science Foundation made observatory defunct. However, there is some glimmer of hope that it may be rebuilt after the Puerto Rican government pledged to give $8 million in aid to the observatory despite the country recently declaring a fiscal emergency.
