Cape Town - The South African MeerKAT radio telescope has captured an image showing more than 50 galaxies never seen, using four of its eventual 64 dishes.
Dr Fernando Camilo, Square Kilometre Array (SKA) South Africa’s chief scientist, said the image showed what a brilliant telescope MeerKAT will be. He said the image covered less than 0.01 percent of the celestial sphere.
“Given that we detect more than 50 galaxies in such a small patch of sky, observed with only four dishes, imagine the discoveries that will be made surveying the entire South African sky with the full 64-dish MeerKAT.”
Camilo said more than 100 researchers and students from South Africa and around the world were discussing the science they wanted to do with the telescope once it was completed towards the end of next year. He said the telescope had exceeded their expectations in terms of capabilities, adding proposals to use it had been received from over the world. Camilo said a panel would be assembled to determine which proposals would be accepted.
The MeerKAT is being built about 90km outside Carnarvon Northern Cape and will have 64 dish-shaped antennas, each 13.5 metres in diameter, so each antenna stands about four storeys high. It will be the most powerful radio telescope in the southern hemisphere.
Camilo said it would be a standalone scientific instrument in its own right for five years, before being incorporated into the large-scale SKA project, which will be built in two phases, starting in 2018, in South Africa and Australia.
Ska will be the world’s largest radio telescope – 50 times more sensitive and up to 10 000 faster than the best radio telescopes. It will be powerful enough to detect radio waves from objects millions, even billions, of light years away from earth. It will use thousands of dishes that will enable astronomers to survey the universe in unprecedented detail.
Project director Dr Rob Adam said the scientific promise of MeerKAT was reflected in the worldwide interest in the workshop.
On Monday, the Western Cape provincial government announced the launch of a project, estimated at R453 million, to build a data centre in the city that will serve as a host for SKA’s computing and data storage requirements.