MeerKAT captures trove of beautiful, rare galaxies

This MeerKAT image shows radio evidence of a powerful merger taking place between two or more massive groups of gas and galaxies in the MCXC J0352.4-7401 cluster. It spans approximately 10 million lightyears at the distance of the cluster and is sprinkled with point-like radio emission from even more distant Milky Way-like galaxies. CREDIT: SARAO.

Astronomers worldwide can now delve into sensitive images of the radio emission from 115 clusters of galaxies thanks to the MeerKAT Galaxy Cluster Legacy Survey (MGCLS).

This huge trove of curated data was released as part of a comprehensive overview paper that will be published in the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal. The images are based on observations between June 2018 and June 2019 by the MeerKAT telescope that is operated by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO). It took another two years for an international team – led by South African researcher Dr Kenda Knowles of Rhodes University and SARAO – to convert the raw data into detailed images of the extremely faint radio sky using powerful computers. The survey covered a large volume of space.

“That’s what’s already enabled us to serendipitously discover rare kinds of galaxies, interactions, and diffuse features of radio emission, many of them quite beautiful,” said Dr Knowles. Members of the MGCLS team are already undertaking more studies into some of the initial discoveries. Beyond that, the richness of the science resulting from the MGCLS is expected to grow over the coming years, as astronomers from around the world download the data from the SARAO MeerKAT archive, and probe it to answer their own questions.