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Johannesburg – South African scientists today revealed the clearest image ever taken of the center of the Milky Way, occupied by a huge black hole, thanks to a new radio telescope called MeerKAT
" the galaxy was an obvious goal: unique, visually striking and full of unexplained phenomena, but it is also notoriously difficult to be pictured with radio telescopes ," he said. in a statement Fernando Camilo Scientific Chief of the South African Observatory of Radioastronomy (SARAO)
The Vice President of the Republic of South Africa, Mr. David Mabuza , inaugurated today the series of 64 MeerKAT paintings …
Posted by SKA South Africa on Friday, July 13, 2018
The Milky Way Center is 25,000 light-years away of Earth, behind the constellation Sagittarius, and is permanently enveloped in clouds of gas and dust, making it invisible from our planet to normal telescopes.
However, infrared technology, X-rays and radio waves can penetrate obstacles and "open a window" on the black hole of 4 million masses. solar (a solar mass is a unit of measurement equivalent to the mass of the Sun) located at the center of the galaxy.
The image published today by the South African team covers an area of 1000 light-years per 500 light-years, with a clear region at its center that corresponds to the center of the galaxy
" Although it was the first days with the MeerKAT and there is still much to be optimized, we decided to go there and we marveled at the results Camilo said, according to the text published by the project SKA Africa devoted to the construction of radio telescopes.
The SKA, in which the MeerKAT is framed, is a project in which eleven countries participate – Germany, Australia, Canada, China, Holland, India, Italy, New Zealand, United Kingdom, South Africa and Sweden – and in which collaborate about twenty others, including Spain.
The goal is to build the radio telescope in Australia and South Africa plus The largest in the world, which will be able to capture images with 50 times higher resolution than those taken by Hubble, in what is one of the biggest scientific and technological challenges in history.
The MeerKAT, whose construction lasted a decade is one of the forerunners of the SKA, was officially inaugurated today at a ceremony in the presence of the Vice President of the University of California. South Africa, David Mabuza, and operates in the semi-arid Karoo region of north-west North Cape Province. currently the most powerful telescope in the southern hemisphere of the planet and has 64 satellite dishes 13.5 meters in diameter each.
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