South Africa’s MeerKAT radio telescope has napped an image of the centre of the Milky Way.
The colour scheme display the signals, from faint to bright is: faint red to orange to yellow to white. The center taken at "2 degree by 1 degree panorama corresponds to an area of approximately 1,000 light-years by 500 light-years." The image shows new features, as well as a clearer view of previously known supernova remnants, star-forming regions, and radio filaments.
The MeerKAT was launched on the 13 July, 2018 by Deputy President David Mabuza‚ and is the world's largest radio telescope which operates in the semi-arid Karoo region, and has led way to the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). The MeerKAT has 64 dishes and 2,000 unique antenna pairs allow us to capture high-fidelity images of radio waves in our sky. The Milky Way passes overhead and is visible for almost 12 hours each day, unlike northern hemisphere locations giving us the advantage in observing the Milky Way.
“We wanted to show the science capabilities of this new instrument.
The center of the Milky Way is 25‚000 light years away from Earth‚ and because it lies behind the constellation Sagittarius (the “Teapot”)‚ it is always obscured by gas and dust‚ making it invisible from Earth using ordinary telescopes.
“Although it’s early days with MeerKAT‚ and a lot remains to be optimized‚ we decided to go for it and were stunned by the results” - Fernando Camilo
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