ThunderKAT in a nutshell

The South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) is operating MeerKAT, a precursor radio telescope to the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). MeerKAT consists of an array of 64 antennas and is the most sensitive cm-radio telescope in the southern hemisphere. MeerKAT will be incorporated into the SKA1-MID component of the SKA around 2022, when the SKA1-MID array will be extended to around 200 antennas spread over a maximum baseline of 150 km.

In 2010, a number of MeerKAT Large Survey Projects (MLSPs) were selected in areas of key scientific interest closely related to the SKA science case. ThunderKAT is the MeerKAT LSP for image-domain (explosive) radio transients. Following a review in 2016, four components of ThunderKAT were approved for scheduling on MeerKAT between 2018 and 2022, namely: X-ray binaries, Cataclysmic Variables, short Gamma-Ray Bursts and Supernovae type Ia. In addition, ThunderKAT will have commensal access to all MeerKAT LSP data to search for synchrotron radio transients in real-time, effectively increasing the discovery-space of rare radio transients by a factor of 10.

The associated and innovative MeerLICHT project ensures that for each radio transient detected in real-time on MeerKAT, multi-filtered optical data at the same location and at the same time will be available. MeerLICHT was opened in May 2018.

For more information about MeerKAT see also: http://www.ska.ac.za/

For more information about MeerLICHT see also: http://meerlicht.uct.ac.za/

For more information about the SKA see also: http://www.skatelescope.org/

Principal Investigators:

• Patrick Woudt (UCT)
• Rob Fender (Oxford University)

The Team:

77 Researchers from 11 countries, including South Africa (23), UK (19), the Netherlands (12), Spain (2), France (6), USA (8), Australia (3), Israel (1), Canada (1), Portugal (1) and Japan (1)

Time Allocation on MeerKAT:

• X-ray binaries
• Cataclysmic Variables
• Short Gamma-Ray Bursts
• Type Ia Supernovae 
• Commensal access to all MeerKAT LSPs

Core Science Themes:

Accretion and outflow processes in black hole, neutron star and white dwarf binaries; gamma-ray bursts and supernovae; fast and coherent radio transients in the image domain; gravitational wave sources.