Previously unknown radio waves from nearby stars and distant galaxies detected
Scientists have measured the radio waves of thousands of nearby stars and distant galaxies that have never before been identified, studying a galaxy body adjacent to our own Milky Way galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud.
An international team of researchers used the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope to "photograph" the radio waves of the Cloud and study the stellar structures within it, producing some of the clearest radio images of the Cloud ever recorded.
What it's about
The Large Magellanic Cloud is a galaxy that borders our own, the Milky Way, and is known as a dwarf spiral companion galaxy. It is about 158,200 light years from Earth and is home to tens of millions of stars.
Because of its proximity to the Milky Way, it is an excellent reference point for researchers studying fundamental questions such as star formation and galaxy structure.
The researchers not only made the clearest radio images of the Cloud ever recorded, but in their analysis they also studied the very stars that form the structure of the Cloud, including the Tarantula Nebula, the most active star-forming region in the local group.
What's the value of the discovery
In addition, newly detected radio emission from distant galaxies in the background, as well as stars in the foreground of our own Milky Way, has been studied.
This study, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, is part of the early Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU) science project, which will observe the entire southern sky and is predicted to detect about 40 million galaxies. The resulting data will eventually be used to give researchers a clearer picture of how galaxies and their stars have evolved over time.
Source: oup.com
Illustration: Keele University
