China to build a data processing laboratory for FAST telescope

Almaty. December 28. Silkroadnews - China will build a data processing laboratory for the FAST telescope, CNTV reported.
“Local media from Guizhou said on Tuesday that a data processing laboratory is going to be constructed for China’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), which is located in the province,” the statement said.
The project will be jointly developed by Guizhou Normal University and the National Astronomical Observatory and is designed to process the data generated by FAST.
“The tremendous amounts of data captured by FAST cannot directly identify astronomical phenomena. They must be processed first before they are understandable,” the agency quoted saying by Zhi Qijun, head of the university’s School of Physics and Electronic Science, and leader of the data processing lab project.
According to him, the main task of the laboratory is to process and analyze a huge amount of astronomical observations data collected by FAST and other telescopes in China and abroad and conduct scientific research to discover new objects and astronomical phenomena, for which the laboratory will also provide theoretical explanations, pushing forward theoretical development of astrophysics.
Building of the laboratory is expected to take three years.
Built in September of last year, FAST has become the world’s largest single-dish radio telescope. It is located in a natural karst depression in Guizhou Province in southwest China. Since the beginning of operation last year the telescope has already made it possible to detect nine pulsars.