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The South African scientific fraternity has reached a new milestone with the official launch of the MeerKAT 64-tray telescope, Friday, July 13, in Carnarvon.
This $ 3.2 billion project was designed and built for a decade under the Ministry of Science and Technology and has now begun scientific operations.
At the launch event, the images obtained with the new telescope revealed extraordinary details in the region surrounding the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way.
This image
shows a wealth of features never before seen and a clearer view of supernova remnants and radio filaments.
It shows the clearest view of the central regions of our galaxy.
At the distance from the galactic center (located in the white zone near the center of the image), this 2 degree panorama over 1 degree corresponds to an area of about 1000 light-years per 500 light years.
The color scheme chosen to display the signals represents the brightness of the radio waves recorded by the telescope (ranging from red for low emission to orange for yellow to white for the brightest areas
"We wanted to show the scientific capabilities of this new instrument, which was built and operated by MeerKAT in the semi-arid Karoo region of the Northern Cape.The center of the galaxy was an obvious target: unique, visually striking and full of unexplained phenomena – but also notoriously difficult to image with the help of radio telescopes, "said Fernando Camilo, chief scientist of the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (Sarao). [19659002LuxuryChallengefrom25000year-yearsandtheSagittary'sconstellation(the"Teapot")isstillundevelopedbydustanddustcloudsvisiblefromtheEarth
However, infrared, X-rays and in particular radio wave lengths penetrate the obscuring dust and open a window to this distinctive region with its only black hole of 4 million solar mass.
Prof. Farhad Yusef-Zadeh of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, said that long, narrow magnetized filaments were discovered in the 1980s using the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope in New Mexico, but their origin remains mysterious. [19659002Cependantl'imageMeerKATaunetelleclarté"ellemontretellementdecaractéristiquesjamaisvuesycomprisdessourcescompactesassociéesàcertainsdesfilamentsqu'ellepourraitfournirlaclépourdéchiffrerlecodeetrésoudrecetteénigmedetroisdécennies"
Yusef-Zadeh congratulated his South African colleagues for crossing an exceptional step
"This instrument will be the & # 39; envy of astronomers around the world will be in great demand for the coming years, "he said.
It shows so many features never seen before. . . that he could provide the key to break the code.
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