Apr 18, 2011 12:04 GMT  ·  By

An astronomical survey was recently able to discover three new water masers inside our galaxy, the Milky Way. One of the new batch of masers is arguably the fastest of its type ever discovered.

It travels through space at around 350 kilometers per second, which is pretty fast for an object of its size. Another of the three may be a member of a special class of masers called water fountains.

Maser as an acronym comes from Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation, which means that it's basically the same thing as a laser, except it uses microwaves rather than light emitted in the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.

They were originally developed on Earth, but masers, as light sources, exist in nature as well. They can be found in outer space, and appear when really massive stars reach the end of their burning cycle.

These objects can also develop inside immense star-forming regions called stellar nurseries. Interactions developing on the surface of the stars, or within the nurseries' gas clouds, produce microwave radiation.

These radiations resemble a maser as viewed from Earh. A water maser occurs when water vapors are also emitted alongside the microwave light. In a water fountain-type maser, this happens to a great extent, investigators say.

Interestingly, studies have also shown that the water molecules which telescopes discovered around stellar nurseries and dying stars have the tendency to absorb light too, and release it as microwaves.

Using data collected from the H2O Southern Galactic Plane Survey (HOPS), experts from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) used a New South Wales, Australia-based telescope to look for water masers.

The Australian Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) managed to identify three additional masers. The research was coordinated by CSIRO expert Glen Rees. “Water masers emit at 22 gigahertz so we conducted our observations at this frequency,” he explains.

Studying these cosmic phenomena could have important implications for astronomy, as it could provide experts with valuable insight into how massive stars develop from stellar nurseries, Daily Galaxy reports.

“Exactly how high-mass stars form is still not well understood and water masers can give a valuable insight into the processes involved,” Rees concludes.