Comparison between the MeerKAT and Gaussian noise distribution. Left panel: the pink linear-log histogram represent the number of voxels with a given flux value in a MeerKAT cube, known to contain no bright galaxies. The blue linear-log histogram is instead computed from a Gaussian noise cube. The black dashed vertical line is the reference 0-flux level, whereas the two grey dash-dotted lines are denoting the ±4σ level. Right panel: ratio between the pink and blue histograms of the left panel. If the MeerKAT noise is truly Gaussian, the ratio should be ∼1 for every flux bin. The black dashed horizontal line marks the 1-to-1 ratio.