The MeerKAT Radio Telescope: First Science

<!--HTML--><p><span><span><span style="color:black">The MeerKAT Radio Telescope, built in the Karoo region of South Africa, has just been inaugurated. This event marks the completion of construction and the commencement of early, shared-risk science. In this talk I will give a brief overview of MeerKAT, discuss some of the construction challenges (with particular focus on the compute and storage), and share some of the spectacular, first-light images obtained over the last few months.</span></span></span></p> <p><strong>About the speaker</strong></p> <p class="MsoPlainText">Simon Ratcliffe has a background in astrophysics and computer science, and is currently the technical lead for scientific computing at SKA South Africa. In this role he oversees the architecture and technical direction of the science processor for the MeerKAT radio telescope.</p>