CARNARVON: The first remarkable image captured by the newly commissioned 16 dish MeerKAT telescope has shown 1 300 galaxies in the distant universe.
The MeerKAT First Light image of the sky, released at the weekend by Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor, shows MeerKAT is already the best radio telescope of its kind in the southern hemisphere.
It is the first significant scientific milestone achieved by MeerKAT, and shows more than 1 300 galaxies in the distant universe, compared to 70 known in this location before.
SKA South Africa chief scientist Dr Fernando Camilo said the image shows new detail about distant space which was previously unknown.
“MeerKAT is doing extremely well, much better than any of us had hoped for. It is a beautiful image.
“It shows that over the coming years, MeerKAT will be a remarkable discovery machine.
“We can learn many things about the universe and about how galaxies are formed and evolve by studying these kinds of images.”
The image looks at a small patch of sky covering less than 0.01 percent of the entire celestial sphere, an area Camilo likened to the same space 20 times the size of the moon.
“In the years to come, MeerKAT will address many of the key open scientific questions of our age by discovering and studying thousands and millions of galaxies in the far off universe.
“This is telling us that we have a working MeerKAT. We have reached a milestone.”
SKA South Africa project director Dr Rob Adam said through MeerKAT South Africa is playing a key role in the design and development of technology for the SKA.
“The South African team of more than 200 young scientists, engineers and technicians, in collaboration with industry, local and foreign universities and institutions, has developed the technologies and systems for MeerKAT.
“These include cutting-edge telescope antennas and receivers, signal processing, timing, telescope management, computing and data storage systems, and algorithms for data processing.”
SKA South Africa chief technologist professor Justin Jonas was confident that after all 64 dishes are in place, MeerKAT will be the world’s leading telescope of its kind until the advent of SKA.