Free Astronomy Magazine September-October 2016

INSTRUMENTS 9 T he radio telescope of Arecibo (Puerto Rico), made famous to the general public by movies such as Contact and Gol- denEye, has lost the record of the astronomical instrument with the world's largest aperture. On July 3 rd , indeed, it was completed the construction of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). With a diameter of half a kilo- meter, FAST exceeds by almost 200 meters the disk of Arecibo SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2016 gest eye is en