Giant dish
500 m across.
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The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, nicknamed Tianyan, «Sky Eye», is the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, built in a natural basin among the limestone hills of Pingtang County in southern Guizhou. Construction began in 2011, it saw first light in September 2016 and became fully operational in January 2020. Its surface is made of 4,500 metal panels that move to form a changing parabola in real time, with the receiver cabin hanging above on cables. Visitors take a shuttle bus to an observation deck overlooking the dish, and the «astronomy town» near the entrance has an interactive astronomy hall and a planetarium. The basic ticket costs CNY 140, covering the shuttle, the astronomy hall and the planetarium, and the shuttle alone 50; it is open from 8.30 am to 6 pm, and no electronic devices are allowed at the observation deck, so phones and cameras go into lockers, per visitor guides.
500 m across.
Above the basin.
In astronomy town.
Dawodang depression, Kedu Town, Pingtang County, Qiannan, Guizhou
Because signals from electronic devices can interfere with the telescope's detection of faint radio waves from space, so phones and cameras go into lockers before the observation deck, per visitor guides.