Suche
Mein Konto
Revolutionary discoveries in space: New data reveals secrets of the Milky Way!
The MALS project studies atomic hydrogen in the Milky Way halo. Bonn astronomers add valuable data.
Revolutionary discoveries in space: New data reveals secrets of the Milky Way!
New advance in astronomy: The MeerKAT Absorption Line Survey (MALS), led by Neeraj Gupta, an astronomer at the Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) in India, has released significant data on the distribution of atomic hydrogen in the Milky Way's halo. This project is essential because atomic hydrogen is the basic substance of all stars and makes up the majority of the matter in the universe. The knowledge about the distribution of HI is extremely valuable for understanding star formation, the dynamics of galaxies, the existence of black holes and the evolution of the Milky Way.
MALS uses the 21 centimeter emission line of neutral atomic hydrogen to determine the distribution and velocity of atomic gas in galaxies. Cold gas can be observed at the centers of galaxies that harbor supermassive black holes. The MALS team, which includes international researchers from various institutions, including the University of Bonn, combines data from MeerKAT with sky surveys from Bonn as well as optical and infrared observations.
Details of the published data
In a study submitted on August 23, 2023, Gupta and 26 co-authors presented the results of the MALS project. These include the first catalogs of radio continuum images in the L-band (900 – 1670 MHz). A total of 391 telescope punctures were observed at a declination of less than +20°, and the catalog includes 495,325 detected radio sources.
- Signal-Rausch-Verhältnis (SNR) über 5
- Erfassungsfläche von 2289 Quadratgrad
- Median räumliche Auflösung: 12“
- Median rms-Rauschen außerhalb des Punktzentrums: 25 μJy beam-1
Catalog accuracy is reported to be less than 6% compared to NVSS and FIRST at 1.4 GHz, highlighting the high quality of the data collected. This data is publicly available and can be used by the scientific community for further analysis.
Innovations in data processing
The raw data amount of 1.6 petabytes is hosted and processed at the IUCAA. An automated pipeline, developed in collaboration with Thoughtworks Technologies India Pvt Ltd, processes these massive amounts of data. Advanced software tools from the Common Astronomy Software Applications (CASA), which were developed by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in the USA, are used for processing.
By combining different data sources, MALS aims to gain a better understanding of atomic gas phases and their relationship to the conditions created by stellar radiation. These comprehensive data provide new perspectives for the exploration of the universe and potentially open new paths to the discovery of high-redshift radio systems.
With these advances in radio astronomy and the initial results of the MALS project, researchers are better positioned to gain deeper insights into the nature and dynamics of our galaxy. Future studies are expected to build on these robust results and further deepen our knowledge of the universe.
The source of information about the MALS project and the structure of the data is University of Bonn. Further technical details can be found in the work of arXiv.