The world's largest radio telescope (for now) -- the MeerKAT radio telescope array in South Africa -- was officially unveiled on July 13. MeerKAT's capabilities were highlighted by a breathtaking a photo it took of the Black Hole gorging on the matter at the center of our Milky Way galaxy.
MeerKAT consists of 64 dishes or mirrors (each with a diameter of 13.5 meters), and is the largest and most sensitive radio telescope in the southern hemisphere until the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) comes online in 2024. It will be integrated into Phase 1 of the mid-frequency component of the SKA.
MeerKAT is to be found 90 kilometers outside the small town of Carnarvon in the Northern Cape. It's expected to significantly increase knowledge of how the Universe formed; how the Universe works and what might shape its future.
MeerKAT can measure the history of the Universe's expansion to help understand Dark Energy. It might also offer insights into the laws of gravity at the Universe's largest scales, and see details of our galaxy and Universe invisible to other telescopes. First light for MeerKAT took place on July 16, 2016.
MeerKAT's image of the Black Hole, the clearest yet taken, shows angry filaments of particles radiating from the Black Hole. These filaments are structures that seem to exist in alignment with this Black Hole. It's unclear what causes these filaments. Scientists speculate the filaments might be particles ejected by the spinning black hole or might be "cosmic strings."
"This image from MeerKAT is awesome to me because the fine filaments seen in the radio image are excellent tracers of the galactic magnetic field, something we don't get to see in most optical and infrared data," said Erin Ryan, research space scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. "High-resolution data like this will help the study of galactic magnetic fields and how they may be important for galaxy evolution."
The Milky Way's central Black Hole is about 25 000 light years away from Earth and is difficult to image because it's hidden by stellar dust and gas.
Each of MeerKAT's radio antennas collects radio waves from cosmic sources and timestamp them; converts them to digital information, and sends them to a central server. The information from each dish is then stitched together into an image. MeerKAT cost over $330 million to build.
SKA, of which MeerKAT is a key component, will have a square kilometer of collecting area. It will have a higher resolution than the Hubble Space Telescope in the radio band. By the late 2020s, SKA should consist of 2,000 radio dishes in the Karoo region of South Africa and Murchison Shire in Western Australia. The total project could one day consist of 3,000 dishes in other African countries.
