"Sky's/Heaven's Eye"), is a radio telescope located in the Dawodang depression (大窝凼洼地), a natural basin in Pingtang County, Guizhou, southwestern China.

[3][4] It has a novel design, using an active surface made of 4,500 metal panels which form a moving parabola shape in real time.

[5] The cabin containing the feed antenna, suspended on cables above the dish, can move automatically by using winches to steer the instrument to receive signals from different directions.

[17][24] Significant difficulties encountered were the site's remote location and poor road access, and the need to add shielding to suppress radio-frequency interference (RFI) from the primary mirror actuators.

[5] Subsequent early science took place mainly in lower frequencies[27] while the active surface is brought to its design accuracy;[28] longer wavelengths are less sensitive to errors in reflector shape.

[26] Local government efforts to develop a tourist industry around the telescope are causing some concern among astronomers worried about nearby mobile telephones acting as sources of RFI.

[29] A projected 10 million tourists in 2017 will force officials to decide on the scientific mission versus the economic benefits of tourism.

[31] On 14 June 2022, astronomers, working with China's FAST telescope, reported the possibility of having detected artificial (presumably alien) signals, but cautioned that further studies are required to determine if some kind of natural radio interference may be the source.

There are 2,225 winches located underneath[5] make it an active surface, pulling on joints between panels, deforming the flexible steel cable support into a parabolic antenna aligned with the desired sky direction.

[21]: 13  The receiving antennas are mounted below this on a Stewart platform which provides fine position control and compensates for disturbances like wind motion.

Its working frequency ranges from 70 MHz to 3.0 GHz,[38] with the upper limit set by the precision with which the primary can approximate a parabola.

The Next Generation Archive System (NGAS), developed by the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Perth, Australia and the European Southern Observatory will store and maintain the large amount of data that it collects.

Both designs had reflectors installed in natural hollows within karst limestone, made of perforated aluminium panels with a movable receiver suspended above; and both have an effective aperture smaller than the physical size of the primary.

The finite size of the triangular panels making up FAST's primary reflector limits the accuracy with which it can approximate a parabola, and thus the shortest wavelength it can focus.

Although Arecibo's full aperture of 305 m (1,000 ft) could be used when observing objects at the zenith, this was only possible with the line feed which had a very narrow frequency range and had been unavailable due to damage since 2017.

[53][36]: 4 Fifth, Arecibo's larger secondary platform also housed several transmitters, making it one of the few instruments in the world capable of radar astronomy.