The Square Kilometre Array (SKA)

Abstract:

The town of Tulancingo de Bravo in the Mexican state of Hidalgo is the site of Mexico's original satellite earth station. Although unused for satellite communications for over 15 years, the site hosts two 32-meter dishes and over a dozen smaller dishes, ranging from 2 to 11 meters in size, along with a substantial supporting infrastructure. Beginning in 2018 we have led a project to convert one or more of the earth station's telecommunications antennas into a radio telescope suitable for research-grade astronomical observations. Here we present a brief history and motivation for the conversion project, provide technical details of the upgraded system with emphasis on the receiver, describe our progress to date, and mention plans for the final stages of the conversion.

Abstract:

We present the first measurements of H i galaxy scaling relations from a blind survey at z > 0.15. We perform spectral stacking of 9023 spectra of star-forming galaxies undetected in H i at 0.23 < z < 0.49, extracted from MIGHTEE-H i Early Science data cubes, acquired with the MeerKAT radio telescope. We stack galaxies in bins of galaxy properties (stellar mass M *, star formation rateSFR, and specific star formation rate sSFR, with sSFR ≡ M */SFR), obtaining ≳5σ detections in most cases, the strongest H i-stacking detections to date in this redshift range. With these detections, we are able to measure scaling relations in the probed redshift interval, finding evidence for a moderate evolution from the median redshift of our sample z med ∼ 0.37 to z ∼ 0. In particular, low-M * galaxies ( log 10 ( M * / M ⊙ ) ∼ 9 ) experience a strong H i depletion (∼0.5 dex in log 10 ( M H I / M ⊙ ) ), while massive galaxies ( log 10 ( M * / M ⊙ ) ∼ 11 ) keep their H i mass nearly unchanged. When looking at the star formation activity, highly star-forming galaxies evolve significantly in M H I (f H I, where f H I ≡ M H I/M *) at fixed SFR (sSFR), while at the lowest probed SFR (sSFR) the scaling relations show no evolution. These findings suggest a scenario in which low-M * galaxies have experienced a strong H i depletion during the last ∼5 Gyr, while massive galaxies have undergone a significant H i replenishment through some accretion mechanism, possibly minor mergers. Interestingly, our results are in good agreement with the predictions of the simba simulation. We conclude that this work sets novel important observational constraints on galaxy scaling relations.