Cosmic Megamaser Spotted By Hubble Telescope
On the middle age of the journey, Hubble Space Telescope discovered an amazing thing in space. It has found a new galaxy which has some exciting and futuristic features, now seeking the attention of astrophysicists.
This galaxy is named as IRAS 16399-093 and it is about 370 million light years away from Earth. The most interesting thing about this galaxy is that its hosting a megamaser. The term ‘Megamaser’ sounds like never heard before. MASER is just like LASER but, it has some key differences with LASER. MASER emits high-density microwaves, rather than Lights. A megamaser is 100 times brighter than the other masers ever recorded.
According to Mail Online, Hubble used its advanced imaging techniques like the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) & the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) to observe this galaxy’s different wavelength. With the help of NICMOS’s higher resolution image scientists identified the detailed structure of galaxy IRAS 16399-093.
Scientists identified that it has a double nucleus. Two separate cores are merging each other towards the Nucleus. Those to cores were identified as IRAS 16399N for the Northern and IRAS 16399S for the southern part. As per Phys report, those two cores are about 11,000 years far away from each other.
However, those two Nuclei has two different features. The southern Core which is also known as IRAS 16399 S is appearing to be a starburst region. Starburst region is a region where new stars form at an incredible rate. The another core, IRAS 16399N is known as Low Ionization Nuclear Emission Region(LINER) Nucleus. which is a region whose emission mostly stems from weakly-ionized or neutral atoms of particular gases. The northern nucleus is also hosting a supermassive black hole. Scientists are assuming that the black hole is about 100 million times bigger than the Sun.
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