MeerKAT radio telescope tagged posts

Unusual Neutron Star Spinning every 76 seconds discovered in Stellar Graveyard

Artist impression of the 76s pulsar (in magenta) compared to other more rapidly spinning sources. Credit: Danielle Futselaar

An international team led by a University of Sydney scientist has discovered an unusual radio signal emitting neutron star that rotates extremely slowly, completing one rotation every 76 seconds.

The star is unique because it resides in the “neutron star graveyard,” where no pulsations are expected. The discovery was made by the MeerTRAP team using the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa and is published in Nature Astronomy.

The star was initially detected from a single pulse. It was then possible to confirm multiple pulses using simultaneous consecutive eight-second-long images of the sky, to confirm its position.

Neutron stars are extremely dense r...

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Plasma Jets reveal Magnetic Fields far, far away

A black hole (marked by the red x) at the centre of galaxy MRC 0600-399 emits a jet of particles that bends into a ‘double-scythe’ T-shape that follows the magnetic field lines at the galaxy subcluster’s boundary.
(Image Credit: Modified from Chibueze, Sakemi, Ohmura et al. (2021) Nature Fig. 1(b))

Radio telescope images enable a new way to study magnetic fields in galaxy clusters millions of light years away. For the first time, researchers have observed plasma jets interacting with magnetic fields in a massive galaxy cluster 600 million light years away, thanks to the help of radio telescopes and supercomputer simulations. The findings, published in the journal Nature, can help clarify how such galaxy clusters evolve.

Galaxy clusters can contain up to thousands of galaxies bound to...

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A New Window to see Hidden Side of Magnetized Universe

The bent jet structures emitted from MRC 0600-399 as observed by the MeerKAT radio telescope (left) are well reproduced by the simulation conducted on ATERUI II (right). The nearby galaxy B visible in the left part of the MeerKAT image is not affecting the jet and has been excluded in the simulation. (Credit: Chibueze, Sakemi, Ohmura et al. (MeerKAT image); Takumi Ohmura, Mami Machida, Hirotaka Nakayama, 4D2U Project, NAOJ (ATERUI II image))

New observations and simulations show that jets of high-energy particles emitted from the central massive black hole in the brightest galaxy in galaxy clusters can be used to map the structure of invisible inter-cluster magnetic fields...

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First image released from World’s Super Radio Telescope

Part of the ensemble of dishes forming South Africa's MeerKAT radio telescope is seen in Carnarvon on July 16, 2016

Part of the ensemble of dishes forming South Africa’s MeerKAT radio telescope is seen in Carnarvon on July 16, 2016

Even operating at a quarter of its eventual capacity, South Africa’s MeerKAT radio telescope showed off its phenomenal power Saturday, revealing 1,300 galaxies in a tiny corner of the universe where only 70 were known before. MeerKAT’s full contingent of 64 receptors will be integrated next year into a multi-nation Square Kilometre Array (SKA) which is is set to become the world’s most powerful radio telescope.

Fernando Camilo said at the site of the dishes near the small town of Carnarvon, 600 km north of Cape Town, “This telescope as is today, only one quarter of the way down (to its full contingent) is”...

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