| Description: | This composite image shows a region of masssive starbirth in our galaxy, seen by radio telescopes. The emission from ammonia gas (left) and dust (right) are shown, along with emission contours of methanol (green) and OH (orange) masers. The masers show that there is a giant bridge of alcohol that stretches 480 billion kilometers across the region.The methanol gas is emitting beams of 'laser' emission at microwave frequencies.
Scientific information: Continuum emission in W3(OH) from Guilloteau et al. (1983) (left) and Wilner et al. (1999) (right) superimposed with our methanol maser spots (white dots), OH maser filament (red contours) and extended methanol filaments (green contours). |
