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SPACE SCIENCES

resulting in a 100 megapixel scientific horizons in unexpected ways,” says Dr Fernando Camilo, SARAO chief scientist. “It’s a
image. Processing of the 70 terabytes testament to the skill and dedication of our South African colleagues who built MeerKAT that
of raw data was shared between two it’s making such remarkable discoveries in one of the most intensively studied corners of the
supercomputers in Cape Town, the Centre radio sky. The image we’re sharing today is rich with scientific potential, and we very much
for High Performance Computing’s Lengau, look forward to further surprises as the astronomical community mines this data for years to
and IDIA’s ilifu. Data processing and come.”
imaging were assisted by Rhodes / SARAO
PhD student Isabella Rammala, who is PAPERS
investigating the compact radio sources in ‘The 1.28 GHz MeerKAT Galactic Center Mosaic’, by I. Heywood et al., accepted for
the image. publication in The Astrophysical Journal. A preprint of the paper can be found here.
The highly linear features pervading ‘Statistical Properties of the Population of the Galactic Center Filaments: The Spectral
the image are radio-emitting magnetised Index and Equipartition Magnetic Field’, by F. Yusef-Zadeh et al., accepted for publication in
threads. Up to 100 light years long, these The Astrophysical Journal Letters. A preprint of the paper can be found here. n
unique structures have defied a conclusive
explanation about their origin since About Meerkat and the South African Radio
discovery over 35 years ago. MeerKAT has
discovered many more such filaments than Astronomy Observatory
were previously known, and the new data
release will allow astronomers to study MeerKAT, originally the Karoo Array Telescope, is a radio telescope inaugurated in 2018
these objects as a population for the first consisting of 64 antennas spread over a diameter of eight kilometres in the Northern
time. The first inroad into such work is Cape province of South Africa. It is the most sensitive telescope of its kind in the world
presented in a companion paper in The and is a precursor to the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope, to be built in
Astrophysical Journal Letters. South Africa and Australia within the coming decade.
“The best telescopes expand our The South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), a facility of the National
Research Foundation, is responsible for managing all radio astronomy initiatives and
facilities in South Africa, including the MeerKAT telescope, and the geodesy and VLBI
In the centre of the image is the activities at the HartRAO facility. SARAO also coordinates the African Very Long Baseline
supernova remnant G359.1-0.5. To Interferometry Network (AVN) for the eight SKA partner countries in Africa, as well
the left is ‘the Mouse’, a runaway as South Africa’s contribution to the infrastructure and engineering planning for the
pulsar possibly formed and ejected SKA. To maximise the return on South Africa’s investment in radio astronomy, SARAO is
by the supernova event. To the upper managing programmes to create capacity in radio astronomy science and engineering
right is one of the longest and most research, and the technical capacity required to support site operations.
famous radio filaments, known as
‘the Snake’.
Credit: I. Heywood, SARAO.

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