NC telescope reveals centre of Milky Way

MeerKAT’s 64 dishes or antennas provide 2 000 unique antenna pairs, far more than any comparable telescope. This design feature contributes critically to making high-fidelity images of the radio sky, including this best view in existence of the centre of the Milky Way.

It is also advantageous to observe the centre of the galaxy from South Africa, where it passes overhead and is visible for almost 12 hours each day, unlike from northern hemisphere locations.

MeerKAT is a South African project, a precursor to the larger international Square Kilometre Array (SKA). It is managed by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), where most of the specialised hardware and associated software was designed and built, in co-operation with industrial partners.

MeerKAT consists of 64 antennas (or dishes), each 13.5 metres in diameter, located on baselines (distances between antenna pairs) of up to 8km.

The dishes are of a highly efficient design with up to four cryogenic receiver systems operating in different bands of the radio spectrum. The first installed set of receivers operates between frequencies of 900 MHz and 1670 MHz.

The vast amounts of data from the 64 dishes (up to 275 Gbytes per second) are processed in real time by a “correlator”, followed by a “science processor”, both purpose-built. After further off-line analysis, images of the radio sky are generated.

Eventually, MeerKAT will be incorporated into Phase 1 of the SKA-MID telescope.