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A mega-scientific project to unlock cosmic enigmas of dark energy to the detection of extraterrestrial life was boosted on July 13, when the 64-antenna MeerKAT telescope was inaugurated in the remote Carnarvon city of Africa from South. At a price of 4.4 trillion rand (23 trillion INR), MeerKAT will be incorporated into the complex Square Kilometer Array instrument (SKA) which, once fully operational by the end of the 2020s, would be the largest and most powerful in the world Up to 3,000 boxes co-hosted in Africa and Australia will then be able to scan the sky 10,000 times faster with 50 times the sensitivity of any other telescope and produce images that exceed the resolution "MeerKAT will address some of the key scientific issues of modern astrophysics – how did the galaxies form, how did they evolve, how did we find ourselves here? For this, MeerKAT is the best in the world, "said Fernando Camilo, chief scientist at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory, which built and operates the telescope.
A terrestrial dish from the MeerKAT telescope. Photo: SKA South Africa
At an inauguration in the presence of South African government officials and foreign dignitaries, Camilo released new images taken by MeerKAT of the area surrounding the supermbadive black hole at the center of the Milky Way
"We did not expect to use our telescope as early in the game, it's not even optimized, but to turn it to the center of the galaxy and get those amazing images, the best of the world, says MeerKAT follows the KAT 7 (Karoo Array Telescope), built in the vast semi-desert region of Karoo, north of Cape Town, to illustrate South Africa's ability to host the SKA. His name is a play on words: in Afrikaans, "meer" means "plus", as in "more KAT", but it also refers to the small mammal native of Karoo and famous for his hind legs to see the world.
In addition to revolutionary research In astronomy, MeerKAT pushes the boundaries of Big Data and high-performance computing with IBM that helps develop systems capable of handling the staggering amount of data transmitted by each antenna. The largest radio telescope of its kind in the southern hemisphere, MeerKAT looks like a cluster of eggs when you see it for the first time about an hour away from Carnarvon.
But up close, each sensitive dish is almost as high as a three-story building, turning on a stationary pedestal while it sweeps the sky. Chosen because of its remoteness, with hills providing an additional shield against radio interference, the project site is the main African base for hundreds of antennas that will eventually be placed up to Kenya and South Africa. in Ghana.
"The first phase of SKA 1 in South Africa is to add 133 antennas to that (of MeerKAT)," said Rob Adam, member of the International Board of Directors SKA.
The expansion is expected to begin next year, said Adam, with the first prototype Flat built in China already on the site about 450 kilometers north of Cape Town in the province of North Cape. MeerKAT will work independently before being incorporated into SKA 1 around 2023, said Adam.
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