China Sky Eye Science Centre 中国天眼科普基地

About China Sky Eye Science Centre

The telescope the complex exists to explain sits in the Dawodang depression, a large karst sinkhole ringed by mountains, and was completed and brought into use on 25 September 2016 after a 22-year process from the first proposal in 1994. Its silver-grey dish is assembled from 4,450 triangular reflector panels in 186 different sizes over a reflecting surface of 250,000 square metres; the Economic Daily's reporter at the inauguration put a walk round the rim at about 40 minutes and the area at some 30 football pitches. As the panels deform, a 300-metre instantaneous paraboloid forms in real time within the 500-metre spherical cap. The feed cabin is carried on six long-span flexible cables, a design that brings the weight of the feed-support system down to 30 tonnes and allows millimetre-level positioning in real time across a working space on the scale of a hundred metres.

The county's own description of the scenic area lists the China Sky Eye viewing platform, the astronomy experience hall and the Nan Rendong memorial hall among its components, along with the Tianmu commercial street, the astronomy time-and-space tower, a dome flight cinema, a spaceflight hall, a VR hall, the FAST light-and-shadow hall, a metaverse XR centre, an astrophysics laboratory and a performance centre. The county describes the whole as combining astronomical popularisation, technology experiences and ecological tourism.

What to look for

• The viewing platform over the dish, which is the county's named vantage point on the telescope itself.
• The astronomy experience hall in the Pingtang astronomy town zone.
• The Nan Rendong memorial hall, one of the halls the county lists inside the scenic area.
• The engineering itself as described at the inauguration: 4,450 triangular panels in 186 sizes, reflector units 1.3 millimetres thick, and a finished 500-metre antenna accurate to three millimetres.
• The six towers and the cable net that hold the feed cabin, built with more than 10,000 tonnes of steel in the ring beam, cable net and towers together.

Location & getting there

Getting to China Sky Eye Science Centre

Confirm the venue or campus, reservation channel and exhibition calendar. A museum name may cover more than one building.

• Search for 中国天眼科普基地 with 黔南布依族苗族自治州 and 平塘县.