Hubble Space Telescope has wound up the year 2016 with a set of brilliant images, capturing an energetic galaxy that is seen housing a "megamaser" unlike other "masers" found in galaxies like Milky Way.
Megamasers differ from masers of regular galaxies in terms of the high glow and intense emission of microwave radiations. The galaxy, IRAS 16399-0937, hosts the megamaser and is located 370 million light-years away from Earth with the vivid images giving a broad idea of what is going on its inside.
The shining galaxy has a peculiar structure with the megamaser having a double core with the two staying apart yet trying to merge into a big core. Even though the two cores are separated by reasonable distances they are soaked in the web of cosmic gas and dust.
The telltale image of the megamaser owes a lot to the sharp observations in different wavelengths pursued by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) known for their high sensitivity, resolution, and field of view.
The hugely bright megamasers are 100 million times brighter than masers found in the Milky Way with the whole galaxy acting like an astronomical laser beaming microwave radiations instead of visible light.
Core Details Of Megamaser
The two nuclei of IRAS 16399-0937 are separated by a distance of 11,000 light-years and are interacting in a giant cloud of gas and dust.
The two parts — IRAS-16399N as the northern core with IRAS-16399S being the southern counterpart — have characteristics that are vastly different.
"They are both buried deep within the same swirl of cosmic gas and dust and are interacting, giving the galaxy its peculiar structure," according to the European Space Agency.
The southern core is a powerhouse that breeds new stars while the northern core is a bit sedate with more neutral gas in it that is feebly ionized. At the same time, it houses a mega black hole that has 100 million times the mass of the Sun.
The significance of this black hole at the northern core can be gauged when it is contrasted with the powerful black hole Sagittarius A*, present in the center of Milky Way. Mind it, that black hole has only 4 million times the mass of the sun.
The super glazing of the megamaser is abetted by internal processes by which stimulated gas amplifies light or microwave radiations even as other components in the system such as stars are not contributing anything to the blazing process.
Great Year For Astronomy
Meanwhile, 2016 has been considered a good year for astronomy that enjoyed many new discoveries, including gravitational waves and locating nearest Earth-like planetary neighbor as value additions to the gone year's repertoire.
In fact, the year solved many puzzles in astronomy including the age of the universe by using tools like maps of faint echo that traced the Big Bang "cosmic microwave background", for fixing the universe's age at 13.82 billion years.
