Chinese scientists have completed the assembly of the largest ground-based telescope for observing the Sun, installing the last antenna.This was reported on Tuesday by the Xinhua news agency with reference to the project participants.
The Daocheng Solar Radio Telescope is expected to start operating in June 2023. The telescope is being commissioned as part of the Meridian project. Rotating antennas will record solar flares for further study of their effect on conditions in near-Earth orbit.
As explained by the designer of the telescope Wu Lin, the time and direction of particle emissions as a result of solar flares cannot be accurately predicted. "These high-energy particles can increase the error of the Chinese satellite navigation system Beidou ("Beidou") from centimeter values to a hundred meters and even cause failures in power supply systems," the agency quotes Wu Lin.
As part of the Meridian project, which was launched in 2008, Chinese scientists are creating a ground-based network of stations to monitor the situation in the near outer space. As the scientist explained, tracking electromagnetic radiation allows detecting solar flares at an early stage and predicting their impact on near-Earth orbit.
The telescope consists of 313 six-meter parabolic antennas, which are located along a circle line with a diameter of more than a kilometer, as well as a hundred-meter calibration tower in its center. The telescope is located in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, located in the southwest of the country, which is located at an altitude of almost four kilometers above sea level, writes TASS.
