This week, the world saw the first images captured by the MeerKat array, which made its debut as one of the most powerful telescopes of its kind. Using 16 out of a planned 64 dishes, the telescope array recorded the radio signals coming from a small area of sky comprising less than .01 percent of the celestial canopy. The resulting images showed the sector to be populated with 1,300 known galaxies, far more than the 70 galaxies that had previously been recorded.
Located in the Karoo region of South Africa, the MeerKat telescope will be an essential part of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project, the international effort to build the world’s largest telescope across sites in South Africa and Australia. After the MeerKAT array is fully-commissioned in 2017, the plans for SKA Phase 1 call for MeerKAT’s 64 dishes to be joined with an additional 133 dishes for a total array of 197 dishes. According to the project timeline, SKA will be built in two phases with SKA1 construction starting in 2018. The South African and Australian sites will observe the universe at different radio frequencies.
Dr. Rob Adam, Project Director of SKA South Africa, characterized the MeerKAT launch and first light results as “a significant milestone for South Africa,” one that leans heavily on local talent and technologies, including of course high-performance computing.
“Through MeerKAT, South Africa is playing a key role in the design and development of technology for the SKA,” he said. “The South African team of more than 200 young scientists, engineers and technicians, in collaboration with industry, local and foreign universities and institutions, has developed the technologies and systems for MeerKAT. These include cutting edge telescope antennas and receivers, signal processing, timing, telescope management, computing and data storage systems, and algorithms for data processing.”
The Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) in Cape Town is a key partner. “It’s a big step up in computational resources for South Africa,” said Jasper Horrell, SKA General Manager of Science Computing and Innovation. “Lengau will support parts of the scientific data analysis for the MeerKAT radio telescope, South Africa’s SKA precursor instrument which is coming online in the Northern Cape. In addition, SKA, South Africa and CHPC are collaborating in a number of ways, including deployment of the MeerKAT archives at CHPC and efforts to develop an African data-intensive research cloud infrastructure with partners from the new Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy (IDIA).”
Source for feature image: SKA South Africa