The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: MeerKAT Target Selection

Abstract

New radio telescope arrays offer unique opportunities for large-scale\ncommensal SETI surveys. Ethernet-based architectures are allowing multiple\nusers to access telescope data simultaneously by means of multicast Ethernet\nsubscriptions. Breakthrough Listen will take advantage of this by conducting a\ncommensal SETI survey on the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa. By\nsubscribing to raw voltage data streams, Breakthrough Listen will be able to\nbeamform commensally anywhere within the field of view during primary science\nobservations. The survey will be conducted with unprecedented speed by forming\nand processing 64 coherent beams simultaneously, allowing the observation of\nseveral million objects within a few years. Both coherent and incoherent\nobserving modes are planned. We present the list of desired sources for\nobservation and explain how these sources were selected from the Gaia DR2\ncatalog. Given observations planned by MeerKAT's primary telescope users, we\ndiscuss their effects on the commensal survey and propose a commensal observing\nstrategy in response. Finally, we outline our proposed approach towards\nobserving one million nearby stars and analyse expected observing progress in\nthe coming years.\n