Abstract
Surveys of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), the closest satellite galaxy to our Solar System, for water vapour sources of measurable intensity have so far yielded negative results. These searches, by Johnston et al.1 and Kaufmann et al.2, with detection limits of about 150 and 20 Jy (1 Jy = 10−26 Wm−2 Hz−1), respectively, suggest that any water vapour masers that exist in the LMC are much weaker than the sources recognized in our own Galaxy and in several more distant galaxies3–5. We now report the results of a survey using the 45-ft Itapetinga radio telescope which shows the presence of a water vapour maser in the N159 region of the LMC.
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Scalise, E., Braz, M. A water vapour maser in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Nature 290, 36 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1038/290036a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/290036a0
