MeerKAT

Sixty-four 13.5 m offset-Gregorian dishes on baselinesbaselineThe separation between two antennas of an interferometer, projected onto the plane perpendicular to the source. Long baselines give fine resolution; short ones recover extended emission. up to 8 km in the Karoo, observing 544 MHz–3.5 GHz in the UHF, L and S bands. The most sensitive centimetre-wave array in the southern sky, with dense uv-coverageuv-coverageThe set of spatial frequencies an interferometer has sampled, set by its baselines and Earth's rotation. Gaps in it limit image fidelity and fix the largest structure the array can recover. for imaging diffuse continuumcontinuumBroadband emission, such as synchrotron or thermal dust, as opposed to spectral lines. Continuum surveys sum over a wide bandwidth for sensitivity., HI21 cm lineThe 1420 MHz hyperfine line of neutral hydrogen (HI). It traces gas in galaxies; redshifted to lower frequencies, its summed brightness over large volumes (intensity mapping) maps large-scale structure without resolving individual galaxies. and pulsarspulsarA rotating, magnetised neutron star whose beamed emission sweeps past Earth once per turn. Millisecond pulsars, spun up by accretion, keep time to tens of nanoseconds over decades.; its dishes will be incorporated into SKA-Mid.

Operator

SARAO

Site

Karoo, South Africa

Aperture

64 × 13.5 m

Passband

544 MHz – 3.5 GHz

Inauguration

13 July 2018