MeerKAT radio telescope
Radiotelescopio MeerKAT
- Date
- 2018 · confidence high
- Place
- Karoo plateau, Carnarvon, Northern Cape, South Africa
- Credited to
- South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO)
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What it is
An array of 64 dishes 13.5 m across, one of the world's most sensitive radio telescopes, a precursor to the Square Kilometre Array. It has revealed giant radio bubbles at the centre of the Milky Way.
Inaugurated in July 2018; the galactic-centre bubbles were published in Nature in 2019.
What it led to
- the construction of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA-Mid)
- the training of African radio astronomers
- mapping of neutral hydrogen and pulsars