South African Astronomers discover two giant radio galaxies

The MeerKAT telescope in South Africa has detected two enormous radio galaxies that are almost 100 times larger than the Milky Way

MeerKAT images of two giant radio galaxies (Credit: J. Delhaize, I. Heywood and the MIGHTEE collaboration)

What may well be the most exciting astronomical discovery of the year has been making significant press in the first month of 2021. A team of astronomers led by Jacinta Delhaize, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cape Town’s Astronomy Department have used the world’s most sensitive radio telescope to discover two new giant radio galaxies at distances of roughly 2.6 and 5.8 billion light-years from Earth. The discoveries fall under the continuous efforts of a research collaboration that operates under the name MIGHTEE and has a special focus on using MeerKAT radio continuum observations to discover study the Astrophysics of radio-emitting objects in the Universe.

While the common perception of telescopes is that they magnify celestial objects and create images of them in optical light, telescopes can also be designed to detect radio waves from. The MeerKAT telescope is just that. Located in the Northern province of South Africa, MeerKAT went online with its 64-antenna array in July 2018 and became the world’s most sensitive radio telescope. To showcase its superb imaging power, an image of the…