Oral Presentation

The superMIGHTEE project: a science pathfinder for the Square Kilometre Array

Author(s): Dharam Lal (National Centre for Radio Astrophysics - TIFR)

Presenter: Dharam Lal (National Centre for Radio Astrophysics - TIFR)

The MeerKAT International GHz Tiered Extragalactic Exploration (MIGHTEE) is one of eight approved Large Survey Projects on the MeerKAT Square Kilometre Array (SKA) precursor telescope. It has devoted nearly 2000 hours of MeerKAT time over several years to secure deep imaging at 2 micro-Jy sensitivity covering 20 sq. deg. over a bandwidth of 0.9-1.6 GHz. Alongside, the upgraded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope SKA pathfinder telescope has baselines almost four times larger than those of MeerKAT, and offers the similar imaging angular resolution and sensitivity between 250-850 MHz as MeerKAT MIGHTEE. This ultra-broad data from two major facilities not only has tremendous scientific potential, it provides extraordinary opportunities to study and characterize the deep radio sky, but also presents us with several technical challenges that must be addressed for the wide-band surveys with the SKA.
In this talk, on behalf of the superMIGHTEE core team, I will summarize our journey of the science from the superMIGHTEE project, present early results from it, and show that the scientific output of it will have a profound impact on our understanding of several science drivers, e.g., (i) the evolution of active galactic nuclei and star-forming galaxies over cosmic time as functions of stellar mass and environment; (ii) the evolution of neutral hydrogen; (iii) the evolution of cosmic magnetic fields in galaxies, groups of galaxies and clusters of galaxies.