The conceptual designs of radio telescopes in Guizhou karst region

Abstract

The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST)—a large-aperture radio telescope constructed in a karst depression—is completing its commissioning. Several studies have been performed using FAST, including the discovery of over 100 pulsars. Nevertheless, the ability of a single telescope is still limited. The construction of other radio telescopes and telescope arrays around FAST will promote its use for new types of observations and help to achieve additional scientific goals. Based on the analyses of the basic properties of the karst depressions in the Guizhou Province—e.g., their morphologies, aperture diameters, and depths—some conceptual designs have been proposed for large-scale radio telescopes and telescopic arrays. They include a drift-scan survey array, a quasi-steerable radio telescope, a tilted radio telescope, and a fixed-reflector, low-frequency spherical radio telescope. The sky coverage and sensitivity have been calculated for each design, and possible science goals have been discussed, including searches for pulsars and fast radio bursts, as well as studies of variable radio sources. By coordinating their observations with FAST, these telescopes will greatly expand the observational capabilities of FAST and yield substantially more science results, especially in the area of time-domain astronomy.