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73-781: MeerKAT , originally the Karoo Array Telescope , is a radio telescope consisting of 64 antennas in the Meerkat National Park , in the Northern Cape of South Africa. In 2003, South Africa submitted an expression of interest to host the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Radio Telescope in Africa, and the locally designed and built MeerKAT was incorporated into the first phase of the SKA. MeerKAT

146-660: A 1.65 x 1.65 degree field-of-view, sampled at 0.56"/pix. It was designed and manufactured in the Netherlands ( Radboud University & NOVA) and is run by a consortium of Radboud University, University of Cape Town, the NRF/SAAO, the University of Oxford, the University of Manchester and the University of Amsterdam. It is the optical eye of MeerKAT, and has as its main-purpose to twin with the MeerKAT radio array to achieve

219-501: A capacity development programme, in 2005. The programme is fully integrated into the operations of SARAO, and it is crafted to develop and retain the researchers, engineers and artisans required to ensure that the MeerKAT and SKA will be successful in South Africa. To date the programme has provided more than 1000 scholarships and fellowships across all relevant academic levels, and for a range of relevant qualifications. The programme

292-428: A diameter of 110 m (360 ft), is expected to become the world's largest fully steerable single-dish radio telescope when completed in 2028. A more typical radio telescope has a single antenna of about 25 meters diameter. Dozens of radio telescopes of about this size are operated in radio observatories all over the world. Since 1965, humans have launched three space-based radio telescopes. The first one, KRT-10,

365-787: A large physically connected radio telescope array is the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope , located in Pune , India . The largest array, the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR), finished in 2012, is located in western Europe and consists of about 81,000 small antennas in 48 stations distributed over an area several hundreds of kilometers in diameter and operates between 1.25 and 30 m wavelengths. VLBI systems using post-observation processing have been constructed with antennas thousands of miles apart. Radio interferometers have also been used to obtain detailed images of

438-481: A radio telescope needs for a useful resolution. Radio telescopes that operate at wavelengths of 3 meters to 30 cm (100 MHz to 1 GHz) are usually well over 100 meters in diameter. Telescopes working at wavelengths shorter than 30 cm (above 1 GHz) range in size from 3 to 90 meters in diameter. The increasing use of radio frequencies for communication makes astronomical observations more and more difficult (see Open spectrum ). Negotiations to defend

511-692: A resolution of 0.2 arc seconds at 3 cm wavelengths. Martin Ryle 's group in Cambridge obtained a Nobel Prize for interferometry and aperture synthesis. The Lloyd's mirror interferometer was also developed independently in 1946 by Joseph Pawsey 's group at the University of Sydney . In the early 1950s, the Cambridge Interferometer mapped the radio sky to produce the famous 2C and 3C surveys of radio sources. An example of

584-689: A simultaneous optical-radio coverage of the Southern Skies. It is the prototype of the BlackGEM array, installed at ESO La Silla in Chile. The Yonsei Survey Telescopes for Astronomical Research ( YSTAR ), decommissioned in 2012, was used for the monitoring of variable stars and other transient events. YSTAR was a joint project between SAAO and the Yonsei University , Korea . The ATLAS asteroid impact early warning system, developed by

657-502: A single antenna whose diameter is equal to the spacing of the antennas furthest apart in the array. A high-quality image requires a large number of different separations between telescopes. Projected separation between any two telescopes, as seen from the radio source, is called a baseline. For example, the Very Large Array (VLA) near Socorro, New Mexico has 27 telescopes with 351 independent baselines at once, which achieves

730-453: Is built into a natural karst depression in the landscape in Guizhou province and cannot move; the feed antenna is in a cabin suspended above the dish on cables. The active dish is composed of 4,450 moveable panels controlled by a computer. By changing the shape of the dish and moving the feed cabin on its cables, the telescope can be steered to point to any region of the sky up to 40° from

803-774: Is coveted by academic colleagues from abroad because of its success in developing, from a low base, significant expertise in radio astronomy over the past 14 years. The African Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) Network (AVN) is an important development towards building SKA on the African Continent. The AVN programme will transfer skills and knowledge in the SKA African partner countries (Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, and Zambia) to build, maintain, operate and use radio telescopes. MeerKAT will also participate in global VLBI operations with all major radio astronomy observatories around

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876-711: Is located. The SAAO has links worldwide for scientific and technological collaboration. Instrumental contributions from the South African Astronomical Observatory include the development of a spherical aberration corrector and the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT). The Noon Gun on Cape Town's Signal Hill is fired remotely by a time signal from the Observatory. The history of the SAAO began when

949-666: Is one such instrument co-located at the South African SKA site. HERA is designed to detect, for the first time, radio signals from the very first stars and galaxies that formed early in the life of the universe. South African engineers and scientists are working with their colleagues at the University of California Berkeley in the US, and Cambridge University in the UK, to build HERA and exploit its unique and fundamental scientific capabilities. Other experiments which have been constructed at

1022-511: Is owned and operated by Vanderbilt University and was based on the design of KELT-North, which was conceived and designed at the Ohio State University , Department of Astronomy. The KELT-South telescope will serve as a counterpart to its northern twin, surveying the southern sky for transiting planets over the next few years. Optical wide-field telescope, installed in 2017. It has a 60 cm (24 in) effective aperture, and

1095-672: Is the largest single optical telescope in the Southern Hemisphere, with a hexagonal mirror array 11 meters across. SALT shares similarities with the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) in Texas. The Southern African Large Telescope gathers twenty-five times as much light as any other existing African Telescope. With this larger mirror array, SALT can record distant stars , galaxies and quasars . The Wide Angle Search for Planets consists of two robotic telescopes ,

1168-546: Is the national centre for optical and infrared astronomy in South Africa. It was established in 1972. The observatory is run by the National Research Foundation of South Africa . The facility's function is to conduct research in astronomy and astrophysics . The primary telescopes are located in Sutherland , which is 370 kilometres (230 mi) from Observatory, Cape Town , where the headquarters

1241-542: Is the study of exoplanets using gravitational microlensing. Two telescopes forming part of Project Solaris is located at the Sutherland site. Solaris-1 and Solaris-2 are both 0.5m f/15 Ritchey–Chrétien telescope . The aims of Project Solaris is to detect circumbinary planets around eclipsing binary stars and to characterise these binaries to improve stellar models. SALT was inaugurated in November 2005. It

1314-549: Is used to control the telescopes remotely. PRime-focus Infrared Microlensing Experiments is a 1.8 metres (71 in) telescope located in Sutherland. PRIME achieved first light on October 8, 2022. Currently PRIME has a near-infrared camera located in its prime focus with a 1.29 square degree field of view. The telescope is a collaboration between Osaka University , University of Maryland , South African Astronomical Observatory, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Astro-Biology Center . The project's primary science objective

1387-834: The Magellanic Clouds ;– A Thorough Study grant from the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in 2000. Other studies the telescope participated in include: Three 1 metre (39 in) telescopes to form part of the LCOGT network were installed in early 2013. The MASTER-SAAO Telescope (obs. code: K95 ) is part of the Russian Mobile Astronomical System of Telescope-Robots . It saw first light on 21 December 2014. It consists of two paired 0.4-m telescopes. In April 2015 it discovered

1460-569: The One-Mile Telescope ), arrays of one-dimensional antennas (e.g., the Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope ) or two-dimensional arrays of omnidirectional dipoles (e.g., Tony Hewish's Pulsar Array ). All of the telescopes in the array are widely separated and are usually connected using coaxial cable , waveguide , optical fiber , or other type of transmission line . Recent advances in

1533-600: The Royal Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope was founded in 1820, the first scientific institution in Africa. Construction of the main buildings was completed in 1829 at a cost of £ 30,000 (equivalent to £3.3 million in 2024 ). The post of His/Her Majesty's astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope was awarded the Royal Medal on two occasions; the first to Thomas Maclear in 1869 for measurement of an arc of

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1606-405: The electromagnetic spectrum that makes up the radio spectrum is very large. As a consequence, the types of antennas that are used as radio telescopes vary widely in design, size, and configuration. At wavelengths of 30 meters to 3 meters (10–100 MHz), they are generally either directional antenna arrays similar to "TV antennas" or large stationary reflectors with movable focal points. Since

1679-709: The frequency allocation for parts of the spectrum most useful for observing the universe are coordinated in the Scientific Committee on Frequency Allocations for Radio Astronomy and Space Science. Some of the more notable frequency bands used by radio telescopes include: The world's largest filled-aperture (i.e. full dish) radio telescope is the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) completed in 2016 by China . The 500-meter-diameter (1,600 ft) dish with an area as large as 30 football fields

1752-408: The reinforced concrete foundations for the MeerKAT antennas was completed on 11 February 2014. Almost 5000 m of concrete and over 570 tonnes of steel were used to build the 64 bases over a 9-month period. MeerKAT is planned to be completed in three phases. The first phase will include all the antennas but only the first receiver will be fitted. A processing bandwidth of 750 MHz is available. For

1825-546: The zenith by moving the suspended feed antenna , giving use of a 270-meter diameter portion of the dish for any individual observation. The largest individual radio telescope of any kind is the RATAN-600 located near Nizhny Arkhyz , Russia , which consists of a 576-meter circle of rectangular radio reflectors, each of which can be pointed towards a central conical receiver. The above stationary dishes are not fully "steerable"; they can only be aimed at points in an area of

1898-468: The "faint hiss" repeated on a cycle of 23 hours and 56 minutes. This period is the length of an astronomical sidereal day , the time it takes any "fixed" object located on the celestial sphere to come back to the same location in the sky. Thus Jansky suspected that the hiss originated outside of the Solar System , and by comparing his observations with optical astronomical maps, Jansky concluded that

1971-470: The 1.9-m Radcliffe Telescope and transported it to Sutherland. The observatory operates from the campus of the Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope that was established in 1820 in the suburb of Observatory, Cape Town . The major observing facilities are, however, located near the town of Sutherland some 370 kilometres (230 mi) from Cape Town . Sutherland was chosen because of its reliably clear and dark nights, but to ensure long term viability of

2044-740: The Assembly, Integration, Verification (AIV) Consortium have been led by SARAO, and there was South African participation in the DISH Consortium, Science Data Processor (SDP) Consortium, the Signal and Data Transport (SaDT Consortium), the Telescope Manager (TM) Consortium and the Mid-frequency Aperture Array Consortium. South African engineers have overseen the system engineering aspects of 5 of

2117-815: The Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) and the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA). It is located on the SKA site in the Karoo , and is a pathfinder for SKA-mid technologies and science. It was designed by engineers within the South Africa Radio Astronomy Observatory and South African industries, and most of the hardware and software was sourced in South Africa. It comprises 64 antennas, each 13.5m in diameter, equipped with cryogenic receivers. The antennas have positions for four receivers, and one of

2190-675: The Correlator/Beamformer (CBF) digital signal processor. Data from the CBF is passed on to the Science Processor computer cluster and disk storage modules. The MeerKAT antenna data is also made available to a number of user-supplied digital backends via the CBF, including pulsar and fast radio burst (FRB) search engines, a precision pulsar timing system, and a SETI signal processor. A time and frequency reference (TFR) system provides clock and absolute time signals required by

2263-620: The Deputy President of South Africa, David Mabuza , inaugurated the MeerKAT Telescope, and unveiled an image produced by MeerKAT that revealed unprecedented detail of the region surrounding the supermassive black hole at the centre of our Milky Way Galaxy. The 64 MeerKAT antennas will be incorporated into Phase 1 of the SKA Mid Frequency Array once the 133 SKA dishes have been built and commissioned on

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2336-1108: The KAPB to the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) and SARAO office in Cape Town, and provides a control and monitoring link to the SARAO operations centre in Cape Town. Telescope data processing and reduction is executed on compute facilities provided by the MeerKAT SP systems, and on other high performance computer facilities provides by MeerKAT users. MeerKAT inaugurated in July 2018 consists of 64 dishes of 13.5 metres in diameter each with an offset Gregorian configuration. An offset dish configuration has been chosen because its unblocked aperture provides uncompromised optical performance and sensitivity, excellent imaging quality and good rejection of unwanted radio frequency interference from satellites and terrestrial transmitters. It also facilitates

2409-499: The KAT-7 dishes. Despite original plans to complete MeerKAT by 2012, construction was suspended in late 2010 due to budget restructure. Science Minister Naledi Pandor denied the suspension marked any setback to the SKA project or 'external considerations'. MeerKAT construction received no funding in 2010/11 and 2011/12. The 2012 South African National Budget projected that just 15 MeerKAT antennas would be completed by 2015. The last of

2482-771: The Karoo site astronomy instruments, the South African Parliament passed the Astronomy Geographic Advantage Act in 2007. The act gives the Minister of Science and Technology the authority to protect areas, through regulations, that are of strategic national importance for astronomy and related scientific endeavours. This 0.5 metres (20 in) reflector was originally built for the Republic Observatory in 1967, but

2555-679: The Karoo site, resulting in a total of 197 antennas for the SKA array. All of the infrastructure currently associated with MeerKAT will be transferred to the SKA array. The KAPB has the capacity to house the additional equipment required by SKA Mid. The science objectives of the MeerKAT surveys are in line with the prime science drivers for the first phase of the SKA , confirming MeerKAT's designation as an SKA precursor instrument. Five years of observing time on MeerKAT have been allocated to leading astronomers who have applied for time to do research. The South African Department of Science and Technology, through

2628-658: The MeerKAT Precursor Array (MPA – also known as KAT-7), on the site started in August 2009. In April 2010 four of the seven first dishes were linked together as an integrated system to produce its first interferometric image of an astronomical object. In Dec 2010, there was a successful detection of very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) fringes between the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory 26 m dish and one of

2701-507: The Milky Way as the first off-world radio source, and he went on to conduct the first sky survey at very high radio frequencies, discovering other radio sources. The rapid development of radar during World War II created technology which was applied to radio astronomy after the war, and radio astronomy became a branch of astronomy, with universities and research institutes constructing large radio telescopes. The range of frequencies in

2774-569: The NRF and SARAO, has invested more than R760 million in infrastructure on the South African SKA site. The innovative design and engineering of the infrastructure established for MeerKAT, as well as the RFI-quiet environment, favourable physical site characteristics, and on-site technical expertise has positioned the site in the Karoo as an ideal location for other radio astronomy experiments. The HERA (Hydrogen Epoch of Reionisation Array) radio telescope

2847-1033: The SA SKA site include PAPER (the Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of Reionization ) and the C-BASS (the C-Band All Sky Survey). To ensure long term viability of the Karoo site for the MeerKAT and the SKA, and for other radio astronomy instruments, the South African Parliament passed the Astronomy Geographic Advantage Act, in 2007. The act gives the Minister of Science and Technology the authority to protect areas, through regulations, that are of strategic national importance for astronomy and related scientific endeavours. In September 2019, an international team of astronomers using South Africa’s MeerKAT radio telescope discovered enormous balloon-like structures that tower hundreds of light-years above and below

2920-744: The Sutherland site. This telescope participates in the PLANET network. The 1.9-m (74-inch) Radcliffe Telescope was commissioned for the Radcliffe Observatory in Pretoria where it was in use between 1948 and 1974. Following the closure of the Radcliffe Observatory it was moved to Sutherland where it became operational again in January 1976. Between 1951 and 2004 it was the largest telescope in South Africa. The telescope

2993-452: The University of Hawaii and funded by NASA, consists of 4 telescopes; South Africa hosts ATLAS-Sutherland. In February 2023, the telescope observed the comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) . The GeoForschungsZentrum, Potsdam in co-operation with the National Research Foundation of South Africa constructed the SAGOS between 1998 and 2000. SAGOS consist of a 1 Hz permanent GPS station,

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3066-845: The anisotropies and the polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background , like the CBI interferometer in 2004. The world's largest physically connected telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), is planned to start operations in 2025. Many astronomical objects are not only observable in visible light but also emit radiation at radio wavelengths . Besides observing energetic objects such as pulsars and quasars , radio telescopes are able to "image" most astronomical objects such as galaxies , nebulae , and even radio emissions from planets . South African Astronomical Observatory#Phased Experimental Demonstrator (PED) The South African Astronomical Observatory ( SAAO )

3139-475: The centre of our galaxy. The experience gained by South African engineers in the design and construction of MeerKAT had been carried over to the SKA design, reducing risks and development costs. South African engineers within SARAO and South African industrial partners have participated in 7 of the 11 SKA engineering design consortia, contributing about 10% of the workforce in these internationally distributed consortia. The Infrastructure South Africa Consortium and

3212-487: The consortia. SARAO has signed an MoU with the SKAO to provide resources to the Bridging Activities that will continue the development of SKA subsystems now that the consortia have concluded their work. Participation by South African industrial partners in previous consortium work and future Bridging Activities is facilitated by SARAO through the Financial Assistance Programme (FAP) funding initiative. Scientists from SARAO and South African universities are well represented on

3285-431: The construction of interferometric telescopes, members of the Karoo Array Telescope constructed the Phased Experimental Demonstrator (PED) at the South African Astronomical Observatory in Cape Town between 2005 and 2007. During 2007, the 15 metres (49 ft) eXperimental Development Model Telescope (XDM) was built at the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory to serve as a testbed for MeerKAT. Construction of

3358-423: The digitisers and other telescope subsystems. This TFR system comprises two hydrogen maser clocks, two rubidium atomic clocks, a precise crystal oscillator, and a set of GNSS receiver systems for time transfer with UTC. The massive computing and digital signal-processing systems located at the KAPB are housed in a large shielded chamber (or Faraday cage ) to prevent radio signals from the equipment interfering with

3431-427: The first comet from South Africa in 35 years, C/2015 G2 (MASTER) . One of the two 1.20 metres (47 in) telescopes of the MOnitoring NEtwork of Telescopes Project is located at Sutherland. Its twin can be found at the McDonald Observatory in Texas. The MONET telescopes are Robotic telescope controllable via the Internet and was constructed by the University of Göttingen . Remote Telescope Markup Language

3504-431: The headquarters in a number of domes and a small museum that displays scientific instruments. The South African Astronomical Observatory is administered at present as a National Facility under management of the National Research Foundation (NRF), formerly the Foundation for Research Development (FRD). In 1974, when the Radcliffe Observatory in Pretoria closed, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) purchased

3577-696: The installation of multiple receiver systems in the primary and secondary focal areas and is the reference design for the mid-band SKA concept. MeerKAT supports a wide range of observing modes, including deep continuum, polarisation and spectral line imaging, pulsar timing and transient searches. A range of standard data products are provided, including an imaging pipeline. A number of "data spigots" are also available to support user-provided instrumentation. Significant design and qualification efforts are planned to ensure high reliability to achieve low operational cost and high availability. MeerKAT's 64 dishes are distributed over two components: To acquire experience in

3650-430: The meridian at the Cape of Good Hope and the second to David Gill in 1903 for researches in solar and stellar parallax, and his energetic direction of the Royal Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope. The Republic Observatory , Johannesburg, was merged with the much older Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope in January 1972 to form the South African Astronomical Observatory. In 1974 the Radcliffe Observatory telescope

3723-430: The one located at SAAO Sutherland and the other at Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on the island of La Palma in the Canaries . WASP-17b , the first exoplanet known to have a retrograde orbit was discovered in 2009 using this array. KELT-South ( Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope – South ) is a small robotic telescope that is designed to detect transiting extrasolar planets. The telescope

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3796-453: The radiation was coming from the Milky Way Galaxy and was strongest in the direction of the center of the galaxy, in the constellation of Sagittarius . An amateur radio operator, Grote Reber , was one of the pioneers of what became known as radio astronomy . He built the first parabolic "dish" radio telescope, 9 metres (30 ft) in diameter, in his back yard in Wheaton, Illinois in 1937. He repeated Jansky's pioneering work, identifying

3869-886: The radio waves coming from them are extremely weak, so radio telescopes require very large antennas to collect enough radio energy to study them, and extremely sensitive receiving equipment. Radio telescopes are typically large parabolic ("dish") antennas similar to those employed in tracking and communicating with satellites and space probes. They may be used individually or linked together electronically in an array. Radio observatories are preferentially located far from major centers of population to avoid electromagnetic interference (EMI) from radio, television , radar , motor vehicles, and other man-made electronic devices. Radio waves from space were first detected by engineer Karl Guthe Jansky in 1932 at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey using an antenna built to study radio receiver noise. The first purpose-built radio telescope

3942-424: The received interfering radio source (static) could be pinpointed. A small shed to the side of the antenna housed an analog pen-and-paper recording system. After recording signals from all directions for several months, Jansky eventually categorized them into three types of static: nearby thunderstorms, distant thunderstorms, and a faint steady hiss above shot noise , of unknown origin. Jansky finally determined that

4015-419: The resolution through a process called aperture synthesis . This technique works by superposing ( interfering ) the signal waves from the different telescopes on the principle that waves that coincide with the same phase will add to each other while two waves that have opposite phases will cancel each other out. This creates a combined telescope that is equivalent in resolution (though not in sensitivity) to

4088-464: The second and third phases, the remaining two receivers will be fitted and the processing bandwidth will be increased to at least 2 GHz, with a goal of 4 GHz. With construction of all sixty-four MeerKAT antennas complete, verification tests have begun to ensure the instruments are functioning correctly. Following this, MeerKAT will be commissioned in the second half of 2018 with the array then coming online for science operations. On 13 July 2018,

4161-414: The sensitive radio receivers. The KAPB itself is partially buried below ground level to provide additional radio frequency interference (RFI) protection, and to provide temperature stability. The KAPB also houses a power conditioning facility for the entire site, including three diesel rotary UPS units that provide an uninterrupted power supply to the whole site. A long-haul optical fibre transfers data from

4234-410: The sky near the zenith , and cannot receive from sources near the horizon. The largest fully steerable dish radio telescope is the 100 meter Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia , United States, constructed in 2000. The largest fully steerable radio telescope in Europe is the Effelsberg 100-m Radio Telescope near Bonn , Germany, operated by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy , which also

4307-404: The stability of electronic oscillators also now permit interferometry to be carried out by independent recording of the signals at the various antennas, and then later correlating the recordings at some central processing facility. This process is known as Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) . Interferometry does increase the total signal collected, but its primary purpose is to vastly increase

4380-505: The three vacant positions will be filled by S-band receivers provided by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR). The array configuration has 61% of the antennas located within a 1 km diameter circle, and the remaining 39% distributed out to a radius of 4 km. The receiver outputs are digitised immediately at the antenna, and the digital data streams are transported to the Karoo Array Processor Building (KAPB) via buried optical fibres. The antenna signals are processed by

4453-529: The various SKA Science Working Groups (SWGs), with about 10% of the authors of papers in the SKA Science Book having South African institution affiliations. The MeerKAT Large Science Projects (LSPs) are closely aligned with the SKA science case, and there is a large membership overlap between the LSP teams and the associated SWGs. To create the required skills to design, construct and operate the SKA and MeerKAT telescopes, and to make optimal use of these radio telescopes for research, once commissioned, SARAO initiated

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4526-410: The wavelengths being observed with these types of antennas are so long, the "reflector" surfaces can be constructed from coarse wire mesh such as chicken wire . At shorter wavelengths parabolic "dish" antennas predominate. The angular resolution of a dish antenna is determined by the ratio of the diameter of the dish to the wavelength of the radio waves being observed. This dictates the dish size

4599-407: The world and will add considerably to the sensitivity of the global VLBI network. Further potential science objectives for MeerKAT are to participate in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and collaborate with NASA on downloading information from space probes. Radio telescope Since astronomical radio sources such as planets , stars , nebulas and galaxies are very far away,

4672-518: The zenith. Although the dish is 500 meters in diameter, only a 300-meter circular area on the dish is illuminated by the feed antenna at any given time, so the actual effective aperture is 300 meters. Construction began in 2007 and was completed July 2016 and the telescope became operational September 25, 2016. The world's second largest filled-aperture telescope was the Arecibo radio telescope located in Arecibo, Puerto Rico , though it suffered catastrophic collapse on 1 December 2020. Arecibo

4745-511: Was a 9-meter parabolic dish constructed by radio amateur Grote Reber in his back yard in Wheaton, Illinois in 1937. The sky survey he performed is often considered the beginning of the field of radio astronomy. The first radio antenna used to identify an astronomical radio source was built by Karl Guthe Jansky , an engineer with Bell Telephone Laboratories , in 1932. Jansky was assigned the task of identifying sources of static that might interfere with radiotelephone service. Jansky's antenna

4818-412: Was an array of dipoles and reflectors designed to receive short wave radio signals at a frequency of 20.5 MHz (wavelength about 14.6 meters). It was mounted on a turntable that allowed it to rotate in any direction, earning it the name "Jansky's merry-go-round." It had a diameter of approximately 100 ft (30 m) and stood 20 ft (6 m) tall. By rotating the antenna, the direction of

4891-520: Was attached to Salyut 6 orbital space station in 1979. In 1997, Japan sent the second, HALCA . The last one was sent by Russia in 2011 called Spektr-R . One of the most notable developments came in 1946 with the introduction of the technique called astronomical interferometry , which means combining the signals from multiple antennas so that they simulate a larger antenna, in order to achieve greater resolution. Astronomical radio interferometers usually consist either of arrays of parabolic dishes (e.g.,

4964-401: Was launched in 2018. Along with the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA), also in South Africa, and two radio telescopes in Western Australia , the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) and the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), the MeerKAT is one of four precursors to the final SKA. MeerKAT is a precursor for the SKA-mid array, as are the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA),

5037-446: Was manufactured by Sir Howard Grubb, Parsons and Co . This 29.5 inches (75 cm) telescope was originally called the Automatic Photometric Telescope, but has been renamed the Alan Cousins Telescope in honour of Alan William James Cousins . One of six telescopes in the Birmingham Solar Oscillations Network . The IRSF is a 140 centimetres (55 in) reflector fitted with a 3 colour Infrared Imager. Originally built as part of

5110-422: Was moved to the Sutherland site in 1972. No longer in use. The 20" telescope was replaced with the Meerlicht telescope. The 20" telescope was relocated to the University of Freestate Boyden observatory and commissioned in ~2019 A 0.75 metres (30 in) Grubb Parsons reflector. This 40 inches (1.0 m) telescope was originally located at SAAO Head office in Observatory, Cape Town , but has since moved to

5183-431: Was one of the world's few radio telescope also capable of active (i.e., transmitting) radar imaging of near-Earth objects (see: radar astronomy ); most other telescopes employ passive detection, i.e., receiving only. Arecibo was another stationary dish telescope like FAST. Arecibo's 305 m (1,001 ft) dish was built into a natural depression in the landscape, the antenna was steerable within an angle of about 20° of

5256-629: Was purchased by the CSIR and moved to Sutherland, where it recommenced work in 1976. SAAO was established in January 1972, as a result of a joint agreement by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) of South Africa and Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) of United Kingdom. The headquarters are located on the grounds of the old Royal Observatory where the main building, offices, national library for astronomy and computer facilities are housed. Historic telescopes are also found at

5329-640: Was the world's largest fully steerable telescope for 30 years until the Green Bank antenna was constructed. The third-largest fully steerable radio telescope is the 76-meter Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire , England, completed in 1957. The fourth-largest fully steerable radio telescopes are six 70-meter dishes: three Russian RT-70 , and three in the NASA Deep Space Network . The planned Qitai Radio Telescope , at

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