Here's the latest update on the Karoo Array Telescope (MeerKAT) project
from “Our man in Cape Town,” Benne Holwerda, researcher at the
University of Cape Town in South Africa.
One of the elementary (but difficult) things for a telescope to do is to stay on target while observing. A telescope’s ability to reliably track an object is crucial for its performance. The first single dish of the KAT-7 is now up and ready in the Karoo, so it is time to see how well it can track something. But how do we check it?
There is a powerful scene in Apollo 13 where they need a single reference point to navigate and end up using Earth centered in the window while doing a violent ‘burn.’
Fortunately the stakes are not that high, but the KAT-7 team uses a similar simple trick: They track the Moon with the new dish, using a small camera mounted at the prime focus.
In the photo, you can see the camera being mounted. The Moon is great for this because it is nice and bright, so we only need a small camera. Jasper Horrell, a MeerKAT engineer, describes it: “We got set up for the optical pointing and had first light. It smoothly and consistently tracked the Moon and some stars (including scans across them).’’
The camera captured another image of the Moon while the telescope dish tracked it. The scope also tracked Jupiter successfully.
This is a control and software test for this first of the seven telescope dishes. Both dish and software are performing splendidly.
Additional posts from Benne Holwerda:
Square Kilometer Array pathfinder projects
Pouring concrete for the Karoo Array Telescope
Our man in Cape Town III: Big radio telescope science