This record-breaking megamaser is the most distant ever observed 5 billion light-years from Earth. Light from this space laser traveled 36 trillion billion miles (58 trillion billion kilometers) to reach our planet. An international team of astronomers led by Marcin Glowacki observed this light using the South African Radio Astronomical Observatory’s MeerKAT telescope. (MeerKAT is the abbreviation for the Karoo Array telescope, before the word Afrikaans for “more.”) Glowacki is a research fellow at the Curtin University junction of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research in Australia. Megamasers are created when two galaxies collide with each other. It is the first hydroxyl megamaser that MeerKAT has observed, Glowacki said. Hydroxl, a chemical group consisting of a hydrogen atom and an oxygen atom, can be found in galaxy mergers. “When galaxies collide, the gas they contain becomes extremely dense and can trigger concentrated beams of light to be ejected,” Glowacki said in a statement. The research team named the laser Nkalakatha, which means “big boss” in isiZulu, the Zulu language of South Africa. Astronomers spotted the megamaser on the first night of a study that lasted more than 3,000 hours of observation time using MeerKAT. “It is striking that, with just one night of observations, we have already found a record-breaking megamaser,” Glowacki said. “It shows how good the telescope is.” The research team continues to use MeerKAT to observe narrow areas in the sky and look for the same items that were spied on in the megamaser. This could provide more information on how the universe evolved. “We have planned megamaser follow-up observations and hope to make many more discoveries,” Glowacki said. The MeerKAT telescope, located in the Karoo region of South Africa, includes a range of 64 radio dishes and has been in operation since July 2018. The powerful telescope is sensitive to faint radio light. MeerKAT is the forerunner of the Intercontinental Square Mile Array (SKA), a telescope under construction in both South Africa and Australia. The array will include thousands of dishes and up to 1 million low-frequency antennas in an effort to build the world’s largest radio telescope. Although these dishes and antennas will be located in different parts of the world, together they will create a telescope that will have more than 1 square kilometer (0.39 square miles) of collection area. As a result, astronomers can explore the entire sky much faster than with other telescopes.
