A new South African telescope publishes an epic image of the galactic center

You are looking at the center of our galactic house, the Milky Way, as pictured by 64 radio telescopes in the South African desert.

Scientists published this image today to inaugurate the MeerKAT radio telescope. But these reaches are part of an even more ambitious project: the Kilometer Array Square, a joint effort to build the world's largest telescope, covering the African and Australian continents.

This image shows particle filaments, structures that seem to exist in alignment with the central black hole of the galaxy. We do not know what causes these filaments. Perhaps they are particles ejected by the black hole that turns; Perhaps they are supposed to be "cosmic strings", and perhaps they are not unique, and other similar structures are waiting to be found, according to a Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics published in 2017. "This MeerKAT image is great for me because the fine filaments of the radio image are excellent tracers of the galactic magnetic field, something we do not see in most data. Optics and Infrared, "Erin Ryan, space researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, told Gizmodo." High-resolution data like this will help study galactic magnetic fields and how they can be important for the future. " Evolution of the galaxies. "

Each of the 64 MeerKAT radio receivers is a 44-foot radio antenna that collects radio waves from cosmic sources (such as the center of the galaxy) with a timestamp, the converts in digital information and send them to a central location. The information of each dish is then correlated in an image. Imagine how a regular telescope works – the light is collected by mirrors and concentrated in the center. In this case, it is as if each of the radio telescopes is itself a mirror, and the "center" is where the fiber optic cables meet to create the main image.

In the end, MeerKAT will be part of the larger Square Kilometer Network (SKA), named because it will have one square kilometer of collection area, potentially with a higher resolution than the Hubble Space Telescope in the radio band. By the end of the 2020s, it is expected to include 2,000 radio antennas in the Karoo region of South Africa and Murchison Shire in Western Australia, and the total project could include 3,000 meals a day in other African countries. News24 reports that MeerKAT alone costs more than 330 million dollars (USD), while the total cost of SKA has not yet been determined.

A telescope like this could have many uses: maybe it could measure the history of the Universe? expansion to help understand the mysterious energy and dark. It could also offer insights into the gravity laws at the largest scales in the Universe, and more generally see details of our galaxy and the Universe that are invisible to other telescopes.

There are many cosmic mysteries to solve. And some answers can come from a huge variety of dishes in South Africa and Australia.

[MeerKAT, News24]

Solution: This post has been updated to correct Dr. Ryan's affiliation. Sorry about that!