Seminar: Transients with MeerKAT and SALT

A/Prof Patrick Alan Woudt 

University of Cape Town

The KAT-7 Array in the Karoo Desert, South Africa.  The beginnings of Southern Africa's SKA Precursor Telescope, MeerKAT.

Download the pdf poster.

The South African SKA project has recently announced the Key Science Projects on MeerKAT, their SKA precursor telescope. Amongst the key science projects is “ThunderKAT” (PI: Woudt & Fender) which has been awarded a nominal 3000 h over the first 5 years of operation of MeerKAT to study transient radio emission associated with accretion and explosive events, such as relativistic jets, nova explosions, supernovae and gamma-ray bursts.

I will discuss aspects of the ThunderKAT survey and the role it will play in the global transient network of facilities/ projects such as the LOFAR Transient Key Science Project and ASKAP/VAST. I will furthermore discuss the role the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) can play in the era of optical and radio transient surveys and present highlights of recent work on novae and dwarf novae by our group at the University of Cape Town.