MeerKAT, originally the Karoo
Array Telescope, is a radio
telescope consisting of 64
antennas in the Meerkat National
Park, in the Northern Cape of
South Africa.
MeerKAT is a precursor for
the SKA-mid array, as are the
Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization
Array (HERA), the Australian SKA
Pathfinder (ASKAP) and the
Murchison Widefield Array (MWA).
The MeerKAT radio telescope
in South Africa has become an
important data source for
Einstein@Home, particularly for
the search for binary pulsars.
With its 64-dish array and high
sensitivity, MeerKAT can detect
faint and distant radio signals
that complement data from other
telescopes like Arecibo and the
GBT. Einstein@Home uses
volunteer computing to analyze
MeerKAT data, searching for the
characteristic pulses of neutron
stars, including those in tight
binary orbits where the signals
are Doppler-shifted. Since the
incorporation of MeerKAT data
around 2022, the project has
been able to expand its pulsar
searches to the southern sky and
discover new pulsars that might
otherwise have gone undetected.
