China's FAST telescope just made the universe clearer to us
What's the story
China's FAST telescope has created the world's largest catalog of neutral hydrogen beyond the Milky Way, a key element in star and galaxy formation. The FAST All-Sky H I Survey (FASHI) project, conducted with the 500-meter radio dish in Guizhou province, has released its second data set. It contains 156,411 extragalactic sources, nearly five times more than what was recorded by the now-defunct Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico.
Data impact
Data helps astronomers understand universe's mysteries
The publicly available data from FASHI gives astronomers around the world an unparalleled pool of galaxies to study some of the universe's biggest mysteries.
This includes everything from how the vast cosmic web formed to why some galaxies flourish while others dwindle.
Compared to ALFALFA, a landmark US survey conducted with Arecibo from 2005-2012, FASHI has surveyed about three times more sky and found smaller, fainter, and more distant galaxies.
Legacy dataset
Research team calls data set 'legacy'
The team of researchers from the National Astronomical Observatories, who led the study on FASHI's findings, said their work has created "a legacy data set that bridges the gap" between earlier surveys and the upcoming Square Kilometre Array.
This massive international radio telescope is currently being built in Australia and South Africa.
The latest study was published in Science China Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy.