S – SKA

From the earliest humans, people have wondered about the planets, the stars, the galaxies and the Universe itself. New telescopes have almost always revealed things that we had not imagined.
Astronomy allows us to see back in time, because the light waves from very distant stars or galaxies take a long time to travel through space to our telescopes, so we see them as they were a very long time ago. Now with MeerKAT’ most powerful telescopes ever, scientist can see back to before the first stars and galaxies were formed.

South Africa, with eight African countries as partners, and Australia have been picked as the sites to host the SKA. Carnarvon in the Karoo, Northern Cape was chosen as the core site. The first seven dishes, KAT-7, are complete and have already produced its first pictures. MeerKAT is attracting great interest internationally – more than 500 international astronomers and 58 from Africa submitted proposals to do work with MeerKAT once it is complete.

Site visits can be arranged by prior arrangement please call Lynley Merrington on 021 506 or email [email protected] or visit www.ska.ac.za