JAKARTA, celebrities.id – Tim astronomer led by Marcin Glowacki detected the most powerful radio wave laser in history, known as a megamaser, in space.
This megamaser is the most distant ever observed, at a distance of 5 billion light years from Earth, whose light can penetrate a distance of 58,000 billion billion kilometers.
Glowacki and team observed this megamaser using the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory’s MeerKAT telescope.
“This is the first hydroxyl megamaser that MeerKAT has observed. Megamasers are created when two galaxies collide with each other,” Glowacki said as quoted by CNN on Sunday (17/4/2022).
“When galaxies collide, the gas they contain becomes very dense and can trigger concentrated rays of light to shoot out,” he said.
Glowacki and team dubbed this megamaser as Nkalakatha.
Astronomers detected the megamaser on the first night of a survey that lasted more than 3,000 hours of observation time using MeerKAT.
“It’s impressive that, with just one night of observation, we have found a record-breaking megamaser. This shows how good the telescope is,” said Glowacki.
The MeerKAT telescope located in the Karoo region of South Africa alone includes 64 radio dishes and has been operating since July 2018. This powerful telescope is sensitive to dim radio light.
Following these findings, Glowacki said he would continue to use MeerKAT to observe narrow areas of the sky closely and look for the same elements spied on megamasers.
This was done to increase knowledge about how the universe evolved.
“We have follow-up observations of the megamaser planned and look forward to making more discoveries,” Glowacki said.
Editor : Imantoko Kurniadi
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