A solar telescope array in southwest China started its trial operation of examining the sun on Friday, according to its developer, the National Space Science Center (NSSC) of the Chinese Academy
of Sciences.
The Daocheng Solar Radio Telescope (DSRT), part of the country's phase-2 Meridian Project and the largest of its kind in the world, has the capability to monitor solar activities continuously and stably with high-quality, said its developer.
It added that its observation capabilities, for example pulsar detection, have been verified after half a year's debugging and testing.
Sitting on the edge of the country's Qinghai-Xizang Plateau in southwest China's Sichuan Province, which is more than 3,800 meters above sea level, the solar radio imaging telescope is composed of 313 six-meter-wide parabolic antennas encircling a 100-meters-high calibration tower in the center.
The telescope will be used to capture high-precision imaging of solar events, and explore methods for monitoring pulsars, fast radio bursts and asteroids, said the NSSC.
In 2008, China launched the Meridian Project, a monitoring network comprising of 31 ground-based stations, to investigate the weather in space and understand the processes behind these catastrophic events.
