MeerKAT is a radio telescope of 64 dishes near Carnarvon in South Africa’s Northern Cape. It was built and is operated by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), and was inaugurated on 13 July 2018.
Working together, the dishes form one powerful instrument for studying the radio sky. MeerKAT is a precursor of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), and will become part of the SKA’s mid-frequency telescope of around 200 dishes in the Karoo.
It is a showcase of African science and engineering at the frontier of astronomy.