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MeerKAT
Sixty-four dishes in the Karoo that will be absorbed into SKA-Mid. Its image of the galactic centre showed radio filaments nobody had resolved before.
- Where
- Northern Cape, South Africa
- Coordinates
- 30.72°S 21.41°E
- Since
- 2018
- On the map
- Show me
- More
- sarao.ac.za
The sky from here
This is a zone 1 sky — pristine on the nine-grade scale, Bortle 1–2, reaching roughly magnitude 7.2–8.0 unaided. The Milky Way casts a shadow. Airglow is visible, the zodiacal light reaches across the sky, and the darkest places on Earth look like this.
That grade puts 107 of the catalogue within easy reach of 10×50 binoculars and 107 within a 130mm — 58 of them need no instrument at all. There is nowhere darker worth driving to; this is already among the better skies on the planet.
There is no season here in which the sky fails to get properly dark — the Sun clears eighteen degrees below the horizon on all 365 nights.
At its highest the galactic centre stands 88° up, which is the difference between a Milky Way with depth in it and a smear along the horizon. Of the 110 Messier objects, none are circumpolar and 4 never rise.
Of everything in the catalogue, Southern Pinwheel, Butterfly Cluster and Ptolemy's Cluster are the best served here, climbing to within a few degrees of straight up — an object at the zenith is being seen through the least air it will ever be seen through, and the difference against the same object low in the south is not subtle.
Against that, Bode's Galaxy and Cigar Galaxy never clear the horizon here at all. No amount of aperture or patience changes that; the only remedy is to travel.
Read at 30.72°S 21.41°E. Darkness is estimated rather than measured; everything else follows from the latitude and holds along the whole parallel. How accurate this is.
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Questions
What part of the sky never rises at MeerKAT?
Everything north of declination +59°. From 30.7°S that is a cap 31° in radius centred on the north celestial pole, which is 7.0% of the whole celestial sphere. It is out of reach permanently rather than seasonally: no time of year and no instrument brings it above the horizon. The matching 7.0% around the south celestial pole is the same geometry inverted, and never sets.
How many hours of true darkness does MeerKAT get?
10 hours 58 minutes on the best night, around 21 June, falling to 6 hours 36 minutes around 21 December. That counts only proper astronomical night, with the Sun eighteen degrees down; the merely-dark hours either side of it are longer. Every night of the year gets there eventually, which is the quiet advantage of not being any further from the equator than this.
When is the Milky Way best from MeerKAT?
June and July, and the timing is the whole point. The core transits at midnight around 17 June everywhere, but at 30.7°S that is the depth of winter: the longest nights of the year, sitting underneath the galaxy at its highest. Northern sites get the same transit date during their shortest and least dark nights. It is the single biggest structural advantage a southern observatory has.
How far is MeerKAT from the other sites on this map?
Its closest neighbour on this map is Southern African Large Telescope, 193 km away to the south. That is also the nearest other observatory, with the next one 960 km beyond it. Measured as the great circle between coordinates, which is the shortest path across the surface and rarely the one you could travel.