Milky Way's cold gas clouds mapped in unprecedented detail by MALS

An international team of astronomers led by professor Neeraj Gupta, astronomer at the Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), India, on Wednesday released the most comprehensive catalogue of cold hydrogen gas in the Milky Way galaxy as part of the MeerKAT Absorption Line Survey (MALS) project using data from the most sensitive radio telescope on Earth, the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa.

- Dheeraj Bengrut

PUNE:

Such hydrogen atoms may eventually transform into molecular gas, the basic fuel for star formation. Therefore, these cold gas structures are key to the conditions that enable star formation and are of considerable interest to astronomers.

Professor Gupta who is the lead investigator of the MALS project, said, "This publicly released catalogue will help us address a wide range of questions about the distribution of cold gas in the halo of the Milky Way and the processes through which galaxies convert gas into stars over cosmic time."