The Cape Town Science Centre (CTSC) in Observatory is kicking off its World Space Week celebration today (4 October 2018) with a talk entitled “From Blurry to Beautiful – SA’s new eyes for the skies”.
After a decade of design and construction, South Africa’s 64-array MeerKAT Radio Telescope was inaugurated on the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) South Africa site 90km outside Carnarvon, Northern Cape on 13 July 2018.
At the event, a panorama image obtained with the new telescope was unveiled that reveals the clearest view yet of the centre of our Milky Way Galaxy.
This, and other images, demonstrated MeerKAT to be “the most powerful radio telescope in the world.”
The general public is invited to join Dr Vasaant Krishnan, a scientist from the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) to find out more about MeerKAT, what was observed at the centre of our Galaxy, the current science objectives of MeerKAT, and progress on the SKA Radio Telescope.
Dr Krishnan originally hailed from Singapore but has spent the last few years studying in Australia where he majored in Mathematics and Physics and obtained a doctorate in radio astronomy. Post-graduation, he worked for two years in Italy at the Osservatorio di Arcetri in Florence, where he was part of a team probing massive star formation. He moved to Cape Town in May 2018 to work for the SKA SA, where he is a member of the commissioning team for the newly established Karoo Array Telescope (MeerKAT).
The talk will take place at the Cape Town Science Centre, 370B Main Road, Observatory, from 18h30.