MeerKAT Telescope

MeerKAT Telescope:

Astronomers used machine learning to mine data from South Africa’s MeerKAT telescope.

• MeerKAT telescope is situated in South Africa’s Northern Cape province and is a precursor to the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope.
• It was originally known as the Karoo Array Telescope (KAT) which would consist of 20 receptors.
• At present, it is having an array of 64 interlinked receptors.
• It uses radio signals from space to study the evolution of the universe and everything it contains.
• Astronomers used a coding framework called Astronomoly and found Odd Radio Circle, which they named SAURON (a Steep and Uneven Ring Of Non-thermal Radiation).
• Odd Radio Circles are very large mysterious objects that are highly circular and bright along the edges at radio wavelengths.
• Although ORCs are bright at radio wavelengths, they cannot be observed at visible, infrared or X-ray wavelengths.