by In Daocheng County, Sichuan Province, on the edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, engineers completed the installation of hardware equipment for the world’s largest telescope array for studying the sun on November 13 and began to enter the debugging phase. The Daocheng Circular Array Solar Radio Imaging Telescope is a synthetic aperture radio telescope composed of 313 dish antennas with a diameter of 6 meters. The antennas are evenly distributed on a ring with a diameter of 1 km. The entire observation chain provides a calibration reference. The project is expected to complete the joint debugging and testing of the system in June 2023, enter the trial operation stage, and fully invest in scientific research. The 100 million yuan project will help researchers study solar eruptions and how they affect the environment around Earth. The sun is expected to enter a highly active phase in the next few years. At that time, the circular array solar radio imaging telescope will be able to monitor solar radio flares in real time and track the entire process of the formation, evolution and interplanetary entry of coronal mass ejections (CMEs).
