Molecular clouds in interstellar space can sometimes generate natural masers (radio wave analogs of lasers), shining with bright and narrow rays. Plots with active star birth create one of the most impressive masers, radiating as much energy in one spectral line as the sun in the visible spectrum.
In 1989, the rays of a maser of atoms of atomic gaseous hydrogen around the star MWC 349 were recorded — a source with a disk of ionized material observed by the edge and bipolar outflow. Emission is characterized by incredible brightness and changes over time. Further reviews over decades showed multiple hydrogen lines around the star, which helped to model the radiation region in more detail. It turned out that two mysterious features are hidden in MWC 349. Let's start with an almost unique source of hydrogen maser. Despite decades of searching, we managed to find only a few other examples, and all of them are much weaker. In addition, there are questions about age. This may be a very young star, approaching the main sequence, or an evolving star. There is an assumption that an unidentified companion is hiding nearby with an age of 5 million years.
To measure the speeds of two stars, we used the TRES spectrograph on the 1.5-meter Tillingasta Reflector. It turned out that the indicators differ by 35 km / s, which means that the variant with the neighbor has few chances. Most likely, the presence of a number of stars - a simple coincidence. It turns out that we may have a young massive star in the area of active star formation.
