Astronomers detect 'galactic space laser'
- Date:
- April 7, 2022
- Source:
- International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research
- Summary:
- A powerful radio-wave laser, called a 'megamaser', has been observed by the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa. The record-breaking find is the most distant megamaser of its kind ever detected, at about five billion light years from Earth. The light from the megamaser has traveled 58 thousand billion billion (58 followed by 21 zeros) kilometers to Earth.
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A powerful radio-wave laser, called a 'megamaser', has been observed by the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa.
The record-breaking find is the most distant megamaser of its kind ever detected, at about five billion light years from Earth.
The light from the megamaser has travelled 58 thousand billion billion (58 followed by 21 zeros) kilometres to Earth.
The discovery was made by an international team of astronomers led by Dr Marcin Glowacki, who previously worked at the Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy and the University of the Western Cape in South Africa.
Dr Glowacki, who is now based at the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Western Australia, said megamasers are usually created when two galaxies violently collide in the Universe.
"When galaxies collide, the gas they contain becomes extremely dense and can trigger concentrated beams of light to shoot out," he said.
"This is the first hydroxyl megamaser of its kind to be observed by MeerKAT and the most distant seen by any telescope to date.
"It's impressive that, with just a single night of observations, we've already found a record-breaking megamaser. It shows just how good the telescope is."
The record-breaking object was named 'Nkalakatha' [pronounced ng-kuh-la-kuh-tah] -- an isiZulu word meaning "big boss."
Dr Glowacki said the megamaser was detected on the first night of a survey involving more than 3000 hours of observations by the MeerKAT telescope.
The team is using MeerKAT to observe narrow regions of the sky extremely deeply and will measure atomic hydrogenin galaxies from the distant past to now. The combination of studying hydroxl masers and hydrogen will help astronomers better understand how the Universe has evolved over time.
"We have follow-up observations of the megamaser planned and hope to make many more discoveries," Dr Glowacki said.
MeerKAT is a precursor instrument for the Square Kilometre Array -- a global initiative to build the world's largest radio telescopes in Western Australia and South Africa.
Story Source:
Materials provided by International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Journal Reference:
- Marcin Glowacki, Jordan D. Collier, Amir Kazemi-Moridani, Bradley Frank, Hayley Roberts, Jeremy Darling, Hans-Rainer Klöckner, Nathan Adams, Andrew J. Baker, Matthew Bershady, Tariq Blecher, Sarah-Louise Blyth, Rebecca Bowler, Barbara Catinella, Laurent Chemin, Steven M. Crawford, Catherine Cress, Romeel Davé, Roger Deane, Erwin de Blok, Jacinta Delhaize, Kenneth Duncan, Ed Elson, Sean February, Eric Gawiser, Peter Hatfield, Julia Healy, Patricia Henning, Kelley M. Hess, Ian Heywood, Benne W. Holwerda, Munira Hoosain, John P. Hughes, Zackary L. Hutchens, Matt Jarvis, Sheila Kannappan, Neal Katz, Dušan Kereš, Marie Korsaga, Renée C. Kraan-Korteweg, Philip Lah, Michelle Lochner, Natasha Maddox, Sphesihle Makhathini, Gerhardt R. Meurer, Martin Meyer, Danail Obreschkow, Se-Heon Oh, Tom Oosterloo, Joshua Oppor, Hengxing Pan, D. J. Pisano, Nandrianina Randriamiarinarivo, Swara Ravindranath, Anja C. Schröder, Rosalind Skelton, Oleg Smirnov, Mathew Smith, Rachel S. Somerville, Raghunathan Srianand, Lister Staveley-Smith, Masayuki Tanaka, Mattia Vaccari, Wim van Driel, Marc Verheijen, Fabian Walter, John F. Wu, Martin A. Zwaan. LADUMA: Discovery of a luminous OH megamaser at z>0.5. The Astrophysical Journal Letters (accepted), 2022 [abstract]
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