Landing page for project EY050

NGC 6240 is just below the classification threshold for a ULIRG and has exceptionally high dense molecular gas fractions. These characteristics suggest that this source should be a bright OH megamaser galaxy. However, Arecibo and VLA observations revealed only shallow OH absorption line features. Due to the bright radio continuum emission, the OH line profiles may be mixed with both absorption and emission at these low-resolution observations. VLBI observations of this source have shown that the radio continuum will be significantly resolved, especially in the peak dense gas region, which is also where OH maser emission is expected. The main aim of this proposal is to use EVN and MERLIN observations to search for possible OH emission in this source and to investigate the connections between dense gas and OH megamaser emission.

This data is part of the archive of VLBI data maintained by JIVE on behalf of the EVN, a network of radio telescopes located primarily in Europe and Asia, with additional antennas in South Africa. The EVN archive itself has the DOI https://doi.org/10.17616/R3Z197