The most sensitive map of the gravitational wave sky to date was produced by an international collaboration of researchers. To achieve this goal, the scientists analysed 4.5 years of pulsar data taken with the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa, one of the most powerful radio telescopes in the world. The MeerKAT Pulsar Timing Array collaboration presents its latest results in a series of three papers published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: The MeerKAT pulsar timing array: Maps of the gravitational-wave sky with the 4.5 year data release; The MeerKAT Pulsar Timing Array: The first search for gravitational waves with the MeerKAT radio telescope; The MeerKAT Pulsar Timing Array: The 4.5-year data release and the noise and stochastic signals of the millisecond pulsar population .
Read more here.
Image: © Carl Knox, OzGrav, Swinburne University of Technology and South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO); The figure shows a MeerKAT antenna in front of an artistic representation of supermassive black holes and the space-time distorted by their impact. The pulsar timing observations with the MeerKAT telescope make it possible to calculate the gravitational wave backgrounds from this data.