China completes world’s largest telescope: DSRT’s target is the Sun

China has completed the world’s largest array of telescopes it has built on the Tibetan Plateau. Thanks to the new telescope, Solar astronomy will be studied and will allow us to more accurately understand the star at the center of our system. The Daocheng Solar Radio Telescope (Daocheng Solar Radio Telescope – DSRT) is recorded as China’s latest breakthrough to study the Sun.

The sun will be examined in more detail

According to Nature, the DSRT cost Yuan 100 million (US$ 14 million) and consists of more than 300 satellite dishes located in a 3-kilometer perimeter formation. Although the installation of DSRT has been completed, the first tests are targeted for June 2024. In the next few years, the activities of the Sun will be studied in detail thanks to this facility.

Radio telescopes like the DSRT are very useful for investigating solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that occur in the Sun’s upper atmosphere (corona). The increase in telescopes in this field in recent years is also described as a golden age for scientists. On the other hand, coronal mass ejections pose a threat to the Earth. For example, as a result of a solar storm in February 2022, 40 Starlink satellites were removed from orbit as a precaution.

Compared to similar telescopic arrays, the DSRT will be more finely tuned and therefore potentially able to capture weaker signals from high-energy particles emitted during CME events. As the sky above us becomes increasingly and sometimes problematically crowded with satellites, it becomes critical to develop reliable and detailed analysis of solar activity.