A group of astronomers from the NCU Centre for Astronomy recorded an unknown phenomenon of alternating emission of radio waves by molecules of methanol and water vapor around a young star.
The discovery was made using the largest Polish radio telescope (RT4) in observatory in Piwnice near Toruń. The research group is headed by Prof. dr habil. Marian Szymczak.
The observed source is marked as G107.298+5.639 - G107 in short. It is a maser with surprising properties. It appears to be the only object where a clear dependency between emissions occurring in two types of masers related to water and methanol has been found.
- It looks as if both phenomena avoided coexistence at the same time, as if they were playing hide and seek. The methanol maser in the G107 flares for several days, then disappears for over 20 days. Then there is a flare of water vapour maser. The maser disappears at 22 GHz, and a flare reappears at 6.7 GHz - Prof. dr. Marian Szymczak explains.
The research results have been published in "Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters".