This record-breaking megamassor is the most distant ever observed at 5 billion light-years from Earth.
The light emitted by the space laser has traveled 36 trillion miles (58 trillion kilometers) to reach our planet.
An international team of astronomers, led by Marcin Glowacki, observed this light using the MeerKAT telescope at the Radio Astronomy Observatory in South Africa. (MeerKAT is an acronym for Karoo Array Telescope, prefixed with the Afrikaans word for “more.”)
Glowacki is a research associate at the Curtin University Center for International Radio Astronomy Research in Australia.
Megamasers are formed when two galaxies collide. Glowicki said this was the first hydroxyl megamaser that Meerkat had noticed.
Hydroxl, a chemical group consisting of one hydrogen atom and one oxygen atom, can be found within galactic mergers.
“When galaxies collide, the gas within them becomes very dense and can release focused beams of light,” Glowicki said in a statement.
The research team named the laser Nkalakatha, which means “big leader” in isiZulu, the Bantu language of the Zulu people of South Africa.
Astronomers discovered Megamaser on the first night of a survey that spanned more than 3,000 hours of observation using MeerKAT.
“It’s quite impressive that in just one night of observations we actually found a record-breaking gigantic,” Glowaki said. “It just shows how good the telescope is.”
The research team continues to use MeerKAT to closely monitor narrow areas of the sky and search for the same items that were spied on in the Megamaser. This may lead to a better understanding of how the universe evolved.
“We have planned follow-up observations of the megamassor and hope to make more discoveries,” Glowaki said.
The MeerKAT telescope, located in the Karoo region of South Africa, consists of an array of 64 radio dishes and has been in operation since July 2018. The strong telescope is sensitive to weak radio light.
MeerKAT is a precursor to the Transcontinental Square Kilometer Array, or SKA, a telescope being built in South Africa and Australia.
The array will include thousands of dishes and up to one million low-frequency antennas with the goal of building the world’s largest radio telescope.
Despite the fact that these dishes and antennas will be in different parts of the world, together they will create a telescope over a square kilometer (0.39 square miles) in size. As a result, astronomers can scan the entire sky much faster than other telescopes.
“Infuriatingly humble internet buffs. Proud hooligans. Web lover. businessman. Award-Winning Music Lawyer.”