Speaker
Description
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will transform radio astronomy, producing vast volumes of complex data that require advanced skills in calibration, imaging, and analysis. Preparing for SKA science, therefore, demands hands-on experience with sensitive, high-resolution observations on pathfinder instruments such as MeerKAT.
Dwarf galaxies will be one of the major focuses of SKA surveys, as their unprecedented sensitivity will reveal many faint systems that are currently undetectable. To build the necessary expertise, we study nearby dwarfs as test cases. Sextans A and Sextans B, at the edge of the Local Group, are gas-rich dwarf irregulars with extended HI envelopes and complex kinematics, making them ideal targets for refining SKA-era data handling and analysis techniques.
Using MeerKAT HI 21-cm observations, we produce high-quality data cubes and derive moment maps with CARACal, SoFiA-2, CARTA, and 3DBarolo. Sextans A exhibits an asymmetric, clumpy H i disk and a declining outer rotation curve, while Sextans B shows a more regular but kinematically lopsided disk. Integrated HI fluxes yield 𝑀HI = (7.5 ± 0.1) × 10⁷ 𝑀⊙ for Sextans A and 𝑀HI = (4.6 ± 0.07) × 10⁷ 𝑀⊙ for Sextans B, consistent with previous KAT-7 measurements.
This work simultaneously advances our understanding of gas dynamics in low-mass galaxies and provides the essential, hands-on expertise in data reduction required to utilise the revolutionary power of the SKA for future studies of galaxy evolution.
| Stream | Science or Engineering |
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