http://www.gizmag.com/five-hundred-meter-aperture-spherical-radio-telescope/18930/

Sorry, Arecibo, you're soon to be # 2. I've read of this telescope being built before but this is an update today with some data on it and a rendering. It's only a model... shhhh. ;^)

"Since its completion in 1963, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, with a diameter of 305 m (1,000 ft) and a collecting area of 73,000 square meters (790,000 sq ft), has been the largest single-aperture radio telescope ever constructed. But Arecibo is set to lose its title with construction now underway in Guizhou Province in southern China of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). Upon its expected completion in 2016, FAST will be able to see more than three times further into space and survey the skies ten times faster than Arecibo."

And further:

Using FAST's unparalleled sensitivity and high surveying speed, the project is expected to enable the surveying of neutral hydrogen in the Milky Way and other galaxies, the detection of new pulsars (both galactic and extragalactic), the search for the first shining stars, and of perhaps most interest to many people, the search for extraterrestrial life. It is expected to be able to detect transmissions from over 1,000 light years away.

I hope that the SAH folks can get a receiver in there.

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Since Arecibo is closed for s@h maybe this project need to approach chinese to mine some data which allegedly the newer antenna should reach 3 times farther.

or is this new haarp weapon? ;)

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Mandtugai!

Since Arecibo is closed for s@h

Arecibo is open and running. http://www.naic.edu/

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This is an exciting prospect! If you want to listen to the stars, keep building bigger radio telescopes! It looks cool.

John.

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ALMA has started taking data on the Atacama highland in Chile. It is probably the most advanced radiotelescope today and I read on the www.setiquest.org site that a key person is going from California to Chile, at 5000 meters height.
Tullio

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