Alternating emissions of water, methanol in space discovered by Polish astronomers

A team of Polish astronomers from the Torun Centre for Astronomy of the Nicolaus Copernicus University has observed previously unknown phenomenon of alternating emission of radio waves from molecules of methanol and water vapor around a young star.

This is the first and only known object with such properties in space.

On Wednesday, the Polish Press Agency (PAP) reported the discovery led by Marian Szymczak. The observations were possible due to a newly-built receiver on the 32m radio telescope RT4, Poland's biggest radio telescope.

For the first time, an alternating, linked maser emission of two types of masers, methanol and water were observed in space. These two types are often found together, but so far no theory has proposed a relationship between their magnitudes.

Masers mean emissions of radio waves, formed on a principle similar to the emission of light in lasers. Methanol and water masers occur in the formation areas of massive stars.

"Currently, we know only 16 such periodic methanol masers, of which five were discovered by our team during observations with Torun radio telescope. One of the objects we study, called G107, turned out to be very special," Szymczak explained in an interview with PAP.

The flares of methanol maser alternate with flares of water vapor maser, showing periodicity and turning out to be a never-before-observed phenomenon.

"Methanol maser in G107 glows for several days and then disappears for more than 20 days, while the water vapor maser appears," explained Szymczak.

The discovery by Polish astronomers, the results of which have been published in the "Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters," will most probably allow for the verification of theories describing the processes associated with masers and areas of massive star formation. Endit