Coffee talks
Friday 19/07/2024 @ 11:30, Sala riunioni quarto piano e on line (meet.google.com/sue-bwvk-axf)
Tao An (Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, China), "Construction of the FAST Core Array: A Groundbreaking Advance in Radio Astronomy"
The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), currently the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, has already made significant contributions to astrophysics thanks to its unparalleled sensitivity. Building on this success, an ambitious new initiative, the FAST Core Array (FCA), is underway. The goal of the FCA is to construct an array of twenty-four 40-meter antennas distributed within a 5-kilometer radius of FAST. Future expansion to 30 kilometers will be considered, depending on construction conditions. This upgrade will transform FAST into a state-of-the-art synthesis aperture array with a wide field of view and broad bandwidth capabilities. The planned array is expected to achieve an angular resolution of about 5 arcseconds at 1.4 GHz, comparable to or better than the expected performance of other contemporary arrays such as SKA1-Mid or the planned ngVLA at similar frequencies. In this presentation, we will review the technical specifications, explain the rationale behind the chosen array configuration, and provide a project timeline highlighting the deployment of the initial six antennas by 2026. The scientific applications of the FAST Core Array are profound. It promises to advance research in areas such as the structure and evolution of HI galaxies, fast radio bursts, pulsars, and other tranient cosmic phenomena, faint radio galaxies. Please join us in discussing the technical challenges, innovative design features, and new areas of science that the FAST core array aims to explore.