Intermittent maser flare around the high-mass young stellar object G353.273+0.641
Abstract
The water maser site associated with G353.273+0.641 is classified as a dominant blueshifted H2O maser, which shows an extremely wide velocity range (+/- 100 km s-1) with almost all flux concentrated in the highly blueshifted emission. The previous study has proposed that this peculiar H2O maser site is excited by a pole-on jet from high mass protostellar object. We report on the monitoring of 22-GHz H2O maser emission from G353.273+0.641 with the VLBI Exploration of Radio Astrometry (VERA) and the Tomakamai 11-m radio telescope. Our VLBI imaging has shown that all maser features are distributed within a very small area of 200 × 200 au2, in spite of the wide velocity range (> 100 km s-1). The light curve obtained by weekly single-dish monitoring shows notably intermittent variation. We have detected three maser flares during three years. Frequent VLBI monitoring has revealed that these flare activities have been accompanied by a significant change of the maser alignments. We have also detected synchronized linear acceleration (-5 km s-1yr-1) of two isolated velocity components, suggesting a lower-limit momentum rate of 10-3 M⊙ km s-1yr-1 for the maser acceleration. All our results support the previously proposed pole-on jet scenario, and finally, a radio jet itself has been detected in our follow-up ATCA observation. If highly intermittent maser flares directly reflect episodic jet-launchings, G353.273+0.641 and similar dominant blueshifted water maser sources can be suitable targets for a time-resolved study of high mass protostellar jet.
- Publication:
-
Cosmic Masers - from OH to H0
- Pub Date:
- July 2012
- DOI:
- 10.1017/S1743921312006722
- Bibcode:
- 2012IAUS..287...98M
- Keywords:
-
- masers;
- stars: early-type;
- stars: formation;
- ISM: jets and outflows