China unveils Asia's largest telescope
On October 28, China unveiled Asia's largest radio telescope at the foot of Sheshan Mountain in Shanghai, aimed at collecting data from space exploration satellites.
The 65-meter-long telescope, with 10 observatories that can receive eight different frequency bands, using radio antennas, will be used to track and collect data from Earth satellites, lunar exploration satellites and deep space probes.
“We hope the new radio telescope will be put into operation soon so that it can be used to observe the Chang'e-2 unmanned spacecraft that will explore the moon,” said Wu Weiren, chief designer of the Lunar Orbiter project.
The telescope will join the VLBI system in four cities to track China's satellites and space probes (Photo: Space)
At the same time, the new telescope will be combined with a long-base radio interferometer (VLBI), a type of instrument used in radio astronomy, which can collect precise data and increase the angular resolution of astronomical observations. China has now established a VLBI system from four telescopes in the cities of Shanghai, Beijing, Kunming and Urumqi.
It is known that the first radio antennas used to identify astronomical radio wave sources were invented by Karl Guthe Jansky, an engineer at Bell Telephone Laboratories, in the early 1930s. It was later applied in the construction of radio telescopes.
According to (dantri) - QN
