Toward Commissioning Solar Observations with MeerKAT: Opening a New Frontier in Solar Radio Physics

Solar radio emissions provide several unique diagnostics tools of the solar corona, which are otherwise inaccessible. However, imaging the very dynamic coronal emissions spanning a large range of angular scales at radio wavelengths is extremely challenging. Due to large numbers of antennas, at GHz frequencies, MeerKAT radio telescope is possibly globally the best-suited instrument at present for providing high-fidelity spectroscopic snapshot solar images. At GHz frequencies the Sun has much higher flux density than any other astronomical sources in the sky. Hence, observing the Sun with sensitive radio telescopes like MeerKAT requires one to attenuate the solar signal suitably for optimum operation of the instrument. We embarked on our voyage of  MeerKAT solar observation using the sidelobes of the primary beam. The images show extremely good morphological similarities with the EUV images as well as the simulated radio images at MeerKAT frequencies demonstrating the high-fidelity of these images. Although this approach was successful, it is naturally better to observe the Sun in the main lobe of the primary beam using suitable attenuation in the signal chain to keep the system in the linear regime. We have been working towards this and will present the current status of our efforts toward commissionsing solar observations with the MeerKAT. Once commissioned, this will enable a host of novel studies, open the door to a large unexplored phase space with significant discovery potential, and also pave the way for solar science with the upcoming Square Kilometre Array-Mid telescope, for which MeerKAT is a precursor.