MKT J170456.2-482100: the first transient discovered by MeerKAT (and other discoveries)

I will present the discovery and investigation of the binary stellar system MKT J170456.2-482100, the first transient discovered by MeerKAT and the first source to receive the official IAU "MKT'' designation. MKT J170456.2-482100 was discovered in the first weeks of ThunderKAT monitoring of the low-mass X-ray binary GX339-4, a field that the ThunderKAT planned to observe every week for the full 5 years of the project. We performed an in-depth archival search and found over 18 years of observations of the source. We used the Southern African Large Telescope to find that the source is a K-type sub-giant with an unknown companion. After two years of weekly monitoring of the GX339-4 field we also found 21 new long-term variable sources. These results in just one MeerKAT field demonstrate the power of the instrument for untargeted searches for variable and transient radio sources, indicating even more exciting results to come. In this talk I will share how we searched for and found MKT J170456.2-482100 and how we investigated the source using both the MeerKAT observations and multi-wavelength observations. I will also present the systematic search for variable sources in the GX339-4 field and the lessons we learned along the way.