News

The APT is the latest member to join the International Pulsar Timing Array consortium.

In April this year, the current members of the International Pulsar Timing Array consortium, consisting of the leading Pulsar Timing Array research collaborations globally, signed into effect an agreement that sees the African Pulsar Timing (APT) group join their ranks.

The other PTA members include, the European Pulsar Timing Array (EPTA), the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), the Indian Pulsar Timing Array project (InPTA) and the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array (PPTA) in Australia.

The collective goal of these PTAs within the IPTA, now also including the APT, is to search for the characteristic signature of low-frequency gravitational waves disturbing the highly precise and periodic emmission of radio pulsars. Jointly these groups observe over 100 millisecond pulsars routinely, using the most sensitive radio telescopes in both the Southern and Northern Hemisphere.

The APT, working together with the MeerKAT Pulsar Timing Array research group, will be contributing data from the sensitive African MeerKAT telescope to this project.

We are delighted to officially join the IPTA, and look forward to working within this dynamic international collaboration!



In record time, the MeerKAT PTA group has found evidence for a stochastic gravitational wave background!

The routine observing of a network of around 80 millisecond pulsars with the MeerKAT telescope over the last five years, has unveiled additional evidence for the presence of a low frequency gravitational wave background — the underlying stretching and squeezing of spacetime on which our planet Earth bobs.

The findings by the MeerKAT Pulsar Timing Array group (MPTA) is an international effort, with contributors from Australian, European and South African institutes, including the University of Cape Town and the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory.

Congratulations to the APT members involved! Here is to a bright future of MeerKAT-driven pulsar science.

See the following press releases and sites for more information,

  • UCT and MeerKAT make giant strides in unveiling mysteries of the universe
  • South Africa’s MeerKAT tracks cosmic ripples in spacetime - SARAO
  • The Conversation: To map the vibration of the universe, astronomers built a detector the size of the galaxy

    The series of three papers published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society can be found at,

  • The MeerKAT Pulsar Timing Array: Noise and stochastic signals of the millisecond pulsar population
  • The MeerKAT Pulsar Timing Array: The first search for gravitational waves with the MeerKAT radio telescope
  • The MeerKAT Pulsar Timing Array: The search for anisotropy in the gravitational wave background