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MeerKAT, originally the Karoo Array Telescope, is a radio telescope under construction in the Northern Cape of South Africa. It will be the largest and most sensitive radio telescope in the southern hemisphere until the Square Kilometre Array is completed around 2024.〔 The telescope will be used for research into cosmic magnetism, galactic evolution, the large-scale structure of the cosmos, dark matter and the nature of transient radio sources.〔 It will also serve as a technology demonstrator for South Africa's bid to host the Square Kilometer Array. The KAT-7 engineering test bed of seven dishes is already complete on site. The construction and commissioning of the full MeerKAT array will follow. == Technical Specifications == MeerKAT will consist of 64 dishes of 13.5 metres in diameter each with an offset Gregorian configuration.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=SKA Africa eNews )〕 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 the installation of multiple receiver systems in the primary and secondary focal areas and is the reference design for the mid-band SKA concept.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=MeerKAT Concept Design Review )〕 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 will be distributed over two components: * A dense inner component containing 70% of the dishes. These are distributed in a two-dimensional fashion with a Gaussian uv-distribution with a dispersion of 300 m, a shortest baseline of 29 m and a longest baseline of 1 km. * An outer component containing 30% of the dishes. These are also distributed in a two-dimensional Gaussian uv-distribution with a dispersion of 2 500 m and a longest baseline of 8 km. For Phase 2, seven additional antennas will be added to extend the longest baselines to about 20 km. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「MeerKAT」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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