Kimberley - The MeerKAT astrological observatory, currently under construction in the Northern Cape, has been chosen as the host of a multi million rand radio astronomical receiver project.
The new radio astronomical receiver project of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) has received full funding from the Max Planck Society.
As the scientific defined frequency range from 1.6 to 3.5 GHz can only be observed under significant sensitivity losses with the 100-m Effelsberg radio telescope due to man-made radio emission (Radio Frequency Interference), the MeerKAT observatory, currently under construction, has been chosen as a host for this receiver system.
Due to its unique location at the Karoo semi-desert, MeerKAT is hardly influenced by interference and will be the most sensitive observatory of the southern hemisphere in the centimetre wavelength regime.
According to MPIfR, the receiver project will not only grant the Max Planck scientists access to a world-class facility and its unique unrestricted view on our galaxy but also extend the frequency range for all MeerKAT scientists and thus empower MeerKATs scientific potential even further.
“Radio astronomy provides an independent view of the cosmos. It allows the study of objects and processes that are otherwise not accessible, and enables the study of a wide range of questions in fundamental physics and astrophysics. The discovery space is mostly limited by the sensitivity of the radio telescopes, but other factors like sky access, time and frequency resolution, throughput (or ‘survey speed’) and complementarily to existing facilities, are hugely important factors. Currently, major efforts are underway to make progress on all these factors.
“An upfront development is provided by the MeerKAT observatory in South Africa. When completed it will already be a world-class facility in stand-alone mode. MeerKAT will even be more sensitive than the largest fully-steerable radio telescopes in the Northern hemisphere, the 100-m radio telescope at Effelsberg and the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. In addition, it will provide a spatial resolution comparable to an eight-kilometre diameter telescope. The science potential of MeerKAT is therefore enormous. The MeerKAT receiver project at our institute provides a receiving system that is finely tuned to the science interests of Max Planck scientists”, Gundolf Wieching, head of the electronics division at MPIfR, said.
“This will allow us to exploit this formidable new instrument and to bring Max Planck scientists to an optimal position to harness other future facilities,” he added. The funded receiver for a frequency range from 1.6 to 3.5 GHz will enable science that falls into the core interests of the MPIfR.
“Our research interests include fundamental physics with tests of theories of gravity and gravitational wave detection by means of pulsar observations,” Michael Kramer, Director at MPIfR and head of its Fundamental Physics research department, said.
“The project is actually expected to do transformational science on pulsars and other areas of astronomy. Other areas include the exploration of the dynamic radio sky, for example with the detection of fast cosmological radio bursts, and also highly sensitive molecular spectroscopy of the interstellar medium or high-resolution imaging of radio sources using Very Long Baseline Interferometry. Each of these science topics alone makes the exploitation of MeerKAT extremely desirable, but together they provide the most compelling background for an excellent positioning of Max Planck scientists in this highly active research field,” he added.
In addition to providing the frontend, the complete project also includes the design and the construction of a state-of-the-art digital backend system which will turn MeerKAT into a discovery machine for pulsars and other time-domain phenomena. The receiver system will be designed and constructed by the MPIfR in collaboration with colleagues from the Universities of Manchester and Oxford.
“The investment is an endorsement of the excellence of the MeerKAT and the South African team which designed and is building it,” Bernie Fanaroff, director of the SKA South Africa project, said.
“We welcome the strong and growing collaboration between South African and German scientists astronomy,” he added.
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