MeerKAT Precursor KAT 7 sees Fringes

10 December 2009

The South African MeerKAT Project reached a major milestone on 3 December 2009 when interference fringes were seen between two of the dishes which have now been constructed on the MeerKAT site. This milestone was reached ahead of schedule - it was originally scheduled for 18 December 2009. This is a major achievement for the MeerKAT team. The subsystems were developed and tested in Cape Town and integrated in the integration laboratory in the MeerKAT Cape Town office. Fringes were seen from a range of radio sources within a few days of the final subsystems arriving on site for installation. Although a great deal of work remains to be done on the MeerKAT precursor, the speed with which this milestone was achieved has demonstrated again the commitment and competence of the South African SKA Project's MeerKAT team.

Interference fringes formed by correlating the signal received by the two antennas from the Orion radio source (bottom 420-700 secs), followed by slew to Jupiter (middle section around 400 secs without fringes) followed by track of Jupiter (top 0-340 secs). The correlator coarse delay correction has been applied in each case. The frequency bandwidth displayed is 400 MHz with a centre frequency of 1.8 GHz (frequency increasing to the right). The thin vertical lines indicate known internally generated signals within the prototype correlator.

Interference fringes from a range of sources.

Five dishes have now been installed on site and it is expected that the seven composite dishes of the MeerKAT precursor, called KAT 7, will all have been installed on the site by the end of January 2010.

MeerKAT precursor dishes on site in the Karoo.