Scenic spot around telescope to open to tourists

The scenic spot in which the world's largest radio telescope is located will be opened to tourists for free, authorities have announced, with the telescope expected to start a test run in the second half of this year.

Authorities in Pingtang county, Guizhou province, said in a statement that the scenic spot where the telescope is located will limit the number of tourists to 2,000 per day to avoid causing disturbances to the functioning of the telescope.

Construction of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope, or FAST, was completed in September. The single-aperture telescope, which has a diameter of 500 meters and is the size of 30 soccer fields, sits in a bowl-shaped valley between hills.