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MeerKAT - SA's SKA Precursor
South Africa is building the Karoo Array Telescope
(MeerKAT) which is a precursor instrument for the
SKA, but will in its own right be amongst the largest
and most powerful telescopes in the world. MeerKAT
is being constructed adjacent to the site proposed for
the SKA near the small town of Carnarvon in the
Northern Cape Province. MeerKAT will develop
technologies appropriate to the SKA, including the
use of composite, one-piece reflectors, single-pixel
wideband receivers, low-cost, high-reliability cryogenic
systems, and reconfigurable digital processing systems.
Following the successful building and testing of a
prototype dish at the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy
Observatory near Johannesburg, the MeerKAT team
is now working on KAT-7, a seven-dish prototype
interferometer array in the Karoo. The construction
and commissioning of the full MeerKAT array
(consisting of 80 dishes) will follow at the same site.
A high speed data network will link the telescope
site in the Karoo to the control centre in Cape Town.
The telescope will be commissioned in 2013.
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