Coffee talks
Monday 10/12/2018 @ 14:30, Sala riunioni quarto piano
Filippo Maccagni (INAF-OAC), "MeerKAT observations of Fornax A"
The MeerKAT Fornax Survey (MFS) will observe for 900 hours the Fornax cluster to study its assembly of new gas-rich galaxies and groups and the physics of gas accretion occurring in its environments. In this talk, I will outline the main scientific goals of the MFS and the main challenges that we will face in the analysis of high resolution (~25 kHz) and sensitivity (0.1 mJy) MeerKAT observations. I will show new results from high resolution (8’’) MeerKAT commissioning observations of Fornax A, the extended radio source in the in-falling group of the cluster. I will focus on the challenges caused by the spatial extent of Fornax A (~1 degree in the sky) in correctly subtracting its continuum emission, and obtaining high dynamic range spectral line observations. I will show how we solve these issues in the automated data reduction pipeline we developed for MeerKAT continuum and spectral line observations (MeerKATHI). In the second part of my talk, I will focus on the analysis of the radio emission of the lobes of Fornax A from 85 MHz to 217 GHz, providing new insights on the evolution of the nuclear activity of this source.