Imaging science with the MPIfR MeerKAT Galactic Plane Survey (MMGPS)

The MPIfR MeerKAT Galactic Plane Survey is a 3000-hour full polarization survey that covers 900 and 300 square degrees at L, S, and UHF band, respectively. This is the first SKA pathfinder survey where both continuum/imaging and time-domain surveys are observed commensally. This survey will have the broadest frequency coverage of the southern sky among the SKA pathfinder surveys. It will also produce a broadband Faraday rotation measure (RM) catalogue of extragalactic sources at a density of 25 per deg sq. The use of this RM grid and Faraday tomography of the diffuse radio emission will give us access to study the small and large scale magnetic fields of the Milky Way and background polarized sources with a quality never seen before. The Pipeline used to calibrate and image the MMGPS full Stokes data has been developed at the MPIfR -- the current state of the software can perform a full stokes calibration, multi scale imaging, polarization cubes, and self calibration of L and S band data from MeerKAT. Currently, the L band part of the survey is completely observed and final images show 7" resolution images with an rms noise of 16 µJy/beam at L band. The S band observations of the Galactic plane already began in collaboration with the South African Radio Astronomical Observatory (SARAO) with outstanding preliminary results. In this talk, we will present the first results of both L and S band surveys.