Colloquium: A Commensal Radio Astronomy FAST Survey (CRAFTS)

© CC-BY-NC-SA; Image credit: Di Li

The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope has transited into normal operation starting 2020. The science committee has approved half of the time for five major surveys. The rest of the time is allocated through open competition. These observation have resulted in two more than 40 publications, including two on the Nature magazine. On April 1st, FAST will release its 2nd open call for proposal, with 10% of time available to the international communities.

In the colloquium, I report mainly about the results from the CRAFTS survey, which is an unprecedented large-scale commensal survey, simultaneously record pulsar, Galactic HI, extra-galactic HI, and transient data streams, with a novel calibration technique. We have discovered more than 150 new pulsars, including at least one double neutron star system. We have imaged about 5% of the full sky, including the Lockman hole, the Orion region, etc. CRAFTS has also resulted in 5 new FRBs, including one high DM repeater that has been localized.