Many people may not know what a
'megamaser' thing is. "A megamaser is a type of astrophysical maser, which
is a naturally occurring source of stimulated spectral line emission." In
simple words, the MegaMaser is a powerful radio-wave laser. About five billion
light-years from the Earth, the discovery of the farthest megamaser is a
record-breaking discovery. From this mega-mass, light would have to travel
56,000 billion billion (21 zeros after 56) to reach our Earth.
The discovery was made by an
international team of astronomers led by Dr. Marcin Glowaki.
Dr. Glowaki, who previously worked at
The Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy and the University
of the Western Cape in South Africa. He is currently working at International
Center for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) of the Western Australia.
According to him, when two galaxies
collide violently in the universe, megamasers are usually formed. He added that
when the galaxies collide, the gas contained in the galaxies becomes extremely
dense, causing the beams of light to be triggered.
This is the first hydroxyl megamaser
of its kind observed by MeerKAT and the most distant megamaser ever seen by any
telescope. This telescope is so advanced that this record-breaking discovery
was captured on a single night's observation. The record-breaking object has
been named 'Nakalkatha'. It is a zulu word meaning "Big Boss."
The megamaser was detected on the first
night of a survey by observing more than 3000 hours by the MeerKAT telescope.
Their team is using MeerKAT to closely monitor the narrow regions of the sky
and will measure nuclear hydrogen galaxies from the distant past to the
present. The combination of hydroxyl mass and hydrogen studies will help
astronomers better understand how the universe has evolved over time.
Many more discoveries are expected in
the future through the observation of these radio telescopes.
