#NEBULA 3 PINK UPGRADE#

In the new study, the Jodrell Bank team looked at the motion of the W3(OH) star forming region in 3-dimensions and also measured physical properties of the gas such as temperature, pressure and the strength and direction of the magnetic fields.

#NEBULA 3 PINK UPGRADE#

Since the upgrade of the UK's MERLIN telescope network, astronomers have been able to image methanol masers with a much higher sensitivity and, for the first time, get a complete picture of all the radiation surrounding maser sources. Until we found these filaments, we thought of masers as point-like objects or very small bright hotspots surrounded by halos of fainter emission,вЂќ said Dr Lisa Harvey-Smith, who is the Principal Investigator for the study and is presenting results at the Royal Astronomical SocietyвЂ™s National Astronomy Meeting on 4th April. вЂњOur discovery is very interesting because it challenges some long-accepted views held in astronomical maser research. The maser filaments occur at shock boundaries where large regions of gas are colliding. Observations show that the entire gas cloud appears to be rotating as a disc around a central star, in a similar manner to the accretion discs in which planets form around young stars. The largest of these maser filaments is 288 billion miles (463 billion km) long. The filaments of masing gas form giant bridges between maser 'spots' in W3(OH) that had been observed previously. The observations have revealed giant filaments of gas that are emitting as 'masers' (molecules in the gas are amplifying and emitting beams of microwave radiation in much the same way as a laser emits beams of light). The team studied an area called W3(OH), a region in our galaxy where stars are being formed by the gravitational collapse of a cloud of gas and dust. The new observations were taken with the UK's MERLIN radio telescopes, which have recently been upgraded.

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