Most stars in the universe formed between 8 billion and 11 billion years ago, during an era astronomers have nicknamed "cosmic noon." By billions of light-years away, researchers hope to learn about during that time.
Telescopes that see the universe in visible light — the kind we see with our naked eyes — can capture galaxies that far away. However, they can’t study their star-forming regions. Dust shrouds these stellar nurseries, blocking visible light from escaping and reaching Earth.
That's where radio telescopes come in. They can examine dusty, star-forming galaxies. But until now, there weren't powerful-enough radio telescopes to study distant galaxies as they looked during this era.
The South African Radio Astronomy Observatory’s MeerKAT telescope array changes that. It recently mapped radio emissions in an area of sky about the size of five full moons and revealed tens of thousands of star-forming galaxies that date to this period ...
