Search for possible exomoons with FAST telescope
Author:
Lukic
Abstract:
Our knowledge of the Solar System, encourages us to beleive that we might expect exomoons to be present around some of the known exoplanets. With present hardware and existing optical astronomy methods we shall not be able to find exomoons at least 10 years from now and even then, it will be a hard task to detect them. Using data from the Exoplanet Orbit Database (EOD) we find stars with Jovian exoplanets within 50 light years. Most of them will be fully accessible by the new radio telescope, The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) under construction, now in the test phase. We suggest radio astronomy based methods to search for possible exomoons around two exoplanets.
China has started assembling the world's largest radio telescope, which will have a dish the size of 30 football pitches when completed, state media reported as Beijing steps up its ambitions in outer space.
The five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) nestles in a bowl-shaped valley between hills in the southwestern province of Guizhou, images posted online show.
Technicians began attaching 4,450 triangular-shaped panels to the telescope's reflector on Thursday, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
FAST will be the world's largest single-aperture telescope, it said, overtaking the Arecibo Observatory in the US territory of Puerto Rico, which is 305 metres (1000 feet) in diameter.
For years Chinese scientists have relied on "second hand" data collected by others in their research and the new telescope is expected to "greatly enhance" the country's capacity to observe outer space, Xinhua said.
"Having a more sensitive telescope, we can receive weaker and more distant radio messages," it cited Wu Xiangping, director-general of the Chinese Astronomical Society, as saying.
"It will help us to search for intelligent life outside of the galaxy and explore the origins of the universe."
