We describe system verification tests and early science results from the pulsar processor (PTUSE) developed for the newly commissioned 64-dish SARAO MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa. MeerKAT is a high-gain ( ${\sim}2.8\,\mbox{K Jy}^{-1}$ ) low-system temperature ( ${\sim}18\,\mbox{K at }20\,\mbox{cm}$ ) radio array that currently operates at 580–1 670 MHz and can produce tied-array beams suitable for pulsar observations. This paper presents results from the MeerTime Large Survey Project and commissioning tests with PTUSE. Highlights include observations of the double pulsar $\mbox{J}0737{-}3039\mbox{A}$ , pulse profiles from 34 millisecond pulsars (MSPs) from a single 2.5-h observation of the Globular cluster Terzan 5, the rotation measure of Ter5O, a 420-sigma giant pulse from the Large Magellanic Cloud pulsar PSR $\mbox{J}0540{-}6919$ , and nulling identified in the slow pulsar PSR J0633–2015. One of the key design specifications for MeerKAT was absolute timing errors of less than 5 ns using their novel precise time system. Our timing of two bright MSPs confirm that MeerKAT delivers exceptional timing. PSR $\mbox{J}2241{-}5236$ exhibits a jitter limit of $<4\,\mbox{ns h}^{-1}$ whilst timing of PSR $\mbox{J}1909{-}3744$ over almost 11 months yields an rms residual of 66 ns with only 4 min integrations. Our results confirm that the MeerKAT is an exceptional pulsar telescope. The array can be split into four separate sub-arrays to time over 1 000 pulsars per day and the future deployment of S-band (1 750–3 500 MHz) receivers will further enhance its capabilities.

Despite considerations of mass loss from stellar evolution suggesting otherwise, the content of gas in globular clusters seems poor and hence its measurement very elusive. One way of constraining the presence of ionized gas in a globular cluster is through its dispersive effects on the radiation of the millisecond pulsars included in the cluster. This effect led Freire et al. in 2001 to the first detection of any kind of gas in a globular cluster in the case of 47 Tucanae. By exploiting the results of 12 additional years of timing, as well as the observation of new millisecond pulsars in 47 Tucanae, we revisited this measurement: we first used the entire set of available timing parameters in order to measure the dynamical properties of the cluster and the three-dimensional position of the pulsars. Then we applied and tested various gas distribution models: assuming a constant gas density, we confirmed the detection of ionized gas with a number density of n = 0.23 ± 0.05 cm −3 , larger than the previous determination (at 2σ uncertainty). Models predicting a decreasing density or following the stellar distribution density are highly disfavoured. We are also able to investigate the presence of an intermediate mass black hole in the centre of the cluster, showing that is not required by the available data, with an upper limit for the mass at ∼ 4000 M .