How a 'MeerKAT' sniffed out 1,300 new galaxies
The South African radio telescope MeerKAT, which is still under construction, has already spotted 1,300 new galaxies.
This montage of MeerKAT First Light radio images shows four zoomed-in insets. The two panels to the right show distant galaxies with massive black holes at their centers. At lower left is a galaxy approximately 200 million light years away, where hydrogen gas is being used up to form stars in large numbers.
MeerKat/SKA South Africa
Upon its first glance into deep space, the MeerKAT has already identified a bunch of distant galaxies.
South Africa鈥檚 radio telescope MeerKAT is considered an early success upon the release of its first image on Saturday. The image shows more than 1,300 galaxies in a region where only 70 had been previously identified 鈥� among them, galaxies centered around massive black holes and hydrogen-rich star factories.
鈥淭he launch of MeerKAT AR1 and its first results is for South Africa,鈥� said Rob Adam, Project Director of SKA South Africa, in a statement. 鈥淭hrough MeerKAT, South Africa is playing a key role in the design and development of technology for the SKA.鈥�
MeerKAT, which was funded and commissioned by the South African government, will be composed of 64 receptors once completed. So far, only 16 dishes have been completed.
The images produced by MeerKat 鈥渁re far better than we could have expected鈥�, the chief scientist of the SKA in聽South Africa, Fernando Camilo, said at the site of the dishes near the small town of Carnarvon, 600 kilometers north of Cape Town,
But MeerKAT is merely a precursor to a much larger project.
The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) telescope will include nearly 200 dishes in South Africa and Australia, and will integrate the MeerKAT array. SKA, which begins construction in 2018, is expected to be the world鈥檚 most powerful radio telescope, capable of detecting objects billions of light years in the distance.
鈥� was designed to contribute significantly to our understanding of cosmology, the study of the structure and evolution of the entire universe in its larger scale,鈥� Naledi Pandor, South Africa鈥檚 Science and Technology Minister, told the Cape Times. 鈥淚n addition, it can help us increase our understanding of the formation and evolution of individual galaxies.鈥�
MeerKAT and SKA have established South Africa as an international competitor in big science, but these projects may also provide significant economic opportunities. The initial MeerKAT project has already employed more than 400 people in infrastructure, fiber optics, and data collection.
鈥淲hat the nuclear and space programmes did for the US and Russian economies shows how important mega-science is in a nation鈥檚 ,鈥� Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel said in a statement.