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A water-vapour giga-maser in the active galaxy TXFS2226 – 184

Nature volume 378, pages 697–699 (1995)Cite this article

Abstract

ACTIVE galactic nuclei are thought to be powered by gas falling into a massive black hole; the different types of active galaxy may arise because we view them through a thick torus of molecular gas at varying angles of inclination1. One way to determine whether the black hole is surrounded by a torus, which would obscure the accretion disk around the black hole along certain lines of sight, is to search for water masers, as these exist only in regions with plentiful molecular gas. Since the first detection2 of an extra-galactic water maser in 1979, they have come to be associated primarily with active galaxies, and have even been used to probe the mass of the central engine3. Here we report the detection of a water giga-maser in the radio galaxy TXFS2226 –184. The strength of the emission supports a recently proposed theory of maser pumping4 that allows for even more powerful masers, which might be detectable at cosmological distances. Water masers may accordingly provide a way to determine distances to galaxies outside the usual distance ladder, providing an independent calibration of the Bubble constant3,5.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories, Private Bag, Weston Creek PO, ACT, 2611, Australia

    Anton M. Koekemoer

  2. Max-Planck-lnstitut für Radioastronomie, Auf dem H¨ugel 69, D-53121, Bonn, Germany

    Christian Henkel & Claudio Codella

  3. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Mail Stop 42, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, USA

    Lincoln J. Greenhill

  4. Department of Astronomy, 601 Campbell Hall, University of California, Berkeley, California, 94720, USA

    Arjun Dey

  5. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, L-413, PO Box 808, 7000 East Avenue, Livermore, California, 94550, USA

    Arjun Dey & Wil van Breugel

  6. Physics Department, University of California, Santa Barbara, California, 93106, USA

    Robert Antonucci

Authors
  1. Anton M. Koekemoer
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  2. Christian Henkel
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  7. Robert Antonucci
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Koekemoer, A., Henkel, C., Greenhill, L. et al. A water-vapour giga-maser in the active galaxy TXFS2226 – 184. Nature 378, 697–699 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1038/378697a0

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