Recently, the world's first room-temperature maser was demonstrated. The maser consisted of a sapphire ring housing a crystal of pentacene-doped p-terphenyl, pumped by a pulsed rhodamine-dye laser. Stimulated emission of microwaves was aided by the high quality factor and small magnetic mode volume of the maser cavity yet the peak optical pumping power was 1.4 kW. Here we report dramatic miniat...

We report the first VLBI map of the 7 mm v=0 J=1–0 maser line of the 29 SiO isotopic substitution in the long period variable star IRC +10011. We have found that this maser emission is composed of multiple features distributed in an incomplete ring, suggesting that this maser is also amplified tangentially as already proposed in other SiO circumstellar masers. We present also the results for so...

We have used the Australia Telescope National Facility Mopra 22m millimetre telescope to search for emission from the 6 −2-7−1 E (85.5-GHz) and 72-63 A − (86.6GHz) transitions of methanol. The search was targeted towards 22 star formation regions which exhibit maser emission in the 107.0-GHz 31-40 A + methanol transition, as well as in the 6.6-GHz 51-60 A + transition characteristic of class II...

Context. Masers are important tracers of the early evolution of young high mass stars, but the relationship between different types of maser and the evolutionary state of the exciting source remains unclear. Aims. To determine whether OH masers are common towards candidate high mass protostellar objects. Methods. We present a survey of OH maser emission towards a sample of high mass protostella...

Compact OH(1720 MHz) masers have proven to be excellent signposts for the interaction of supernova remnants with adjacent molecular clouds. Less appreciated has been the weak, extended OH(1720 MHz) emission which accompanies strong compact maser sources. Recent single-dish and interferometric observations reveal the majority of maser-emitting supernova remnants(SNRs) have accompanying regions o...

In the early days of methanol maser discoveries the 9 2 − 10 1 A + transition at 23.1 GHz was found to exhibit maser characteristics in the northern star-forming region W3(OH), and probable maser emission in two other sources. Attention subsequently turned to the 6.6-GHz 5 1 − 6 0 A + methanol maser transition, which has proved a valuable tracer of early high-mass star formation. We have undert...

We present the preliminary results of the first alignment to milliarsecond accuracy of the 6-GHz maser emission in OH and methanol maser lines toward W3(OH). The identifications of Zeeman pairs allowed us to infer the actual velocity of the OH material and the magnetic field strength at the location where 6.7-GHz methanol maser emission arises.