Dr Jim Cohen (ATNF Visiting Scientist / Jodrell Bank Observatory, UK)

The Methanol Multibeam Project - Dr Jim Cohen Colloquium

ATNF Marsfield Lecture Theatre

Abstract

The new 7-beam methanol multibeam (MMB) receiver was successfully commissioned at Parkes in January, and has begun surveying the Milky Way for newly forming stars, that are pinpointed by strong methanol maser emission at 6.7 GHz. The Parkes survey of the Milky Way for methanol masers (P502) is two orders of magnitude faster than previous systematic surveys using 30-m class dishes. The first science run (10 days in January) yielded 60 new sources, including some which must lie on the far side of the Galaxy (from their radial velocities), at distances of at least 16kpc. The second run in February is proving equally successful. The methanol multibeam receiver is also being used in a fixed pointing mode to search for highly scattered pulsars (P512). The spectral line backend is run in parallel, to make a deep survey of the galactic centre region, which has already yielded its first new masers. I will give an overview of the project and present preliminary results.