Overview
- Astronomers using South Africa’s 64‑dish MeerKAT array captured the radio emission from a system more than 8 billion light‑years away.
- Analyses identify hydroxyl emission from dense molecular gas, marking the most distant hydroxyl megamaser reported so far.
- A massive foreground galaxy gravitationally lensed the source, boosting parts of the signal by more than tenfold and enabling its detection.
- The detected emission splits into four distinct components from different regions within the merger, with at least two strongly amplified by lensing.
- Scientists say the source may qualify as a rarer “gigamaser,” a designation that remains provisional pending follow‑up observations and modeling.