The MeerKAT International GHz Tiered Extragalactic Exploration (MIGHTEE) Survey

Abstract

The MIGHTEE large survey project will survey four of the most well-studied extragalactic deep fields, totalling 20 square degrees to µJy sensitivity at Giga-Hertz frequencies, as well as an ultra-deep image of a single ∼1 deg 2 MeerKAT pointing. The observations will provide radio continuum, spectral line and polarisation information. As such, MIGHTEE, along with the excellent multi-wavelength data already available in these deep fields, will allow a range of science to be achieved. Specifically, MIGHTEE is designed to significantly enhance our understanding of, (i) the evolution of AGN and star-formation activity over cosmic time, as a function of stellar mass and environment, free of dust obscuration; (ii) the evolution of neutral hydrogen in the Universe and how this neutral gas eventually turns into stars after moving through the molecular phase, and how efficiently this can fuel AGN activity; (iii) the properties of cosmic magnetic fields and how they evolve in clusters, filaments and galaxies. MIGHTEE will reach similar depth to the planned SKA all-sky survey, and thus will provide a pilot to the cosmology experiments that will be carried out by the SKA over a much larger survey volume.

Feedback from Active Galactic Nuclei in Galaxy Groups

“…While its spatial resolution is modest (∼100 ), its high sensitivity at low frequency and provision of fluxes in multiple bands makes it a powerful tool for studying radio galaxies, particularly old, fading sources. Higher frequency (∼1 GHz), higher spatial resolution (8-30 ) surveys of continuum emission and HI are becoming available from ASKAP (e.g., RACS, WALLABY, [357,358]) and MeerKAT (e.g., MIGHTEE, [359]), and these observatories are beginning to produce interesting findings on, e.g., group dynamics and evolution [360,361] and the population of giant radio galaxies [197,201].…”

Magnetism Science with the Square Kilometre Array

“…MeerKAT. Several MeerKAT Large Survey Projects (LSPs) incorporate a polarization component, including in imaging mode: the MeerKAT International GHz Tiered Extragalactic Exploration (MIGHTEE) [201]; commensal polarimetry with the deep H I LADUMA (Looking at the Distant Universe with the MeerKAT Array) 10 project [202]; and MHONGOOSE (MeerKAT H I Observations of Nearby Galactic Objects -Observing Southern Emitters) 11 [203]. The MIGHTEE project team is planning complementary observations with the upgraded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) to provide combined deep polarimetry of several square degrees with semi-contiguous frequency coverage from 300-2500 MHz.…”

Development and application of an HDF5 schema for SKA-scale image cube visualization

“…With up to 32768 spectral channels in each polarization, data cubes of tens of terabytes per pointing will be typical. Multi-field mosaicking, as will be carried out for the MeerKAT MIGHTEE deep imaging survey (Jarvis et al, 2016), and images from very large field-of-view SKA pathfinders such as ASKAP (Johnston et al, 2007), require 64 k × 64 k pixel image frames.…”