Investigating the presence of ′ New′ Extended Radio Emission in The KAT-7 Clusters of Galaxies

Project Description:

Diffuse radio emission that is observed in merging galaxy clusters, known as radio halos (and relics), carries crucial information about the presence of relativistic particles and magnetic fields in the interiors of merging clusters. The origin of radio halos remains a mystery, and systematic studies of these sources are required to assess their relevance for the evolutionary studies of the cluster population, and for unveiling their origin. In this project the student will work with radio observations of a sample of galaxy clusters that were selected from the Planck Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) all-sky catalog. The observations were obtained with the Karoo Array Telescope (KAT-7), the precursor array telescope of the MeerKAT, at 1.83 GHz. The KAT-7 configuration of very short baselines was particularly suited to detect extended diffuse radio emission in these clusters. MeerKAT data is available for 7 out of the 8 clusters. The student who takes up this project will investigate the properties of the diffuse radio emission in these clusters. Some of the specific tasks the student will be expected to perform include: ➢ Estimating the fluxes of point sources in the radio halo region using best-fitting power law models. ➢ Measuring radio halos and relic fluxes. ➢ Comparing the KAT-7 and MeerKAT maps. ➢ Perform detailed spectral index analysis. ➢ investigate the possibility of the presence of new diffuse emission in three clusters.

Research Area:

Astronomy

Project Level:

Masters

This Project Is Offered At The Following Node(s):

(NWU)

Special Requirements:

Basic Python programming skills. Some computing experience in the Unix/Linux environment.