Looking Up - 27 October 2017

Telescopes Galore! Another telescope is being commissioned in Sutherland, and this one is highly unusual. Called Meerlicht, this is a robotic optical telescope which will observe the same patch of sky as MEERKAT, the new radio telescope being built in the Karoo. Where MEERKAT is the ears, Meerlicht is the eyes: by looking at objects in different wavelengths we can see different things just as our eyes and ears detect the same events at the same time, but in different ways. Professor Patrick Woudt, Head of the Astronomy Department at the University of Cape Town, explains what Meerlicht is about.