Water emission from the high-mass star-forming region IRAS 17233-3606

We investigate the physical and chemical processes at work during the formation of a massive protostar based on the observation of water in an outflow from a very young object previously detected in H2 and SiO in the IRAS 17233-3606 region. We estimated the abundance of water to understand its chemistry, and to constrain the mass of the emitting outflow. We present new observations of shocked water obtained with the HIFI receiver onboard Herschel. We detected water at high velocities in a range similar to SiO. We self-consistently fitted these observations along with previous SiO data through a state-of-the-art, one-dimensional, stationary C-shock model. We found that a single model can explain the SiO and H2O emission in the red and blue wings of the spectra. Remarkably, one common area, similar to that found for H2 emission, fits both the SiO and H2O emission regions. This shock model subsequently allowed us to assess the shocked water column density, NH2O = 1.2 × 1018 cm-2, mass, MH2O = 12.5 M⊕, and its maximum fractional abundance with respect to the total density, xH2O = 1.4 × 10-4. The corresponding water abundance in fractional column density units ranges between 2.5 × 10-5 and 1.2 × 10-5, in agreement with recent results obtained in outflows from low- and high-mass young stellar objects. Herschel is an ESA space observatory with science instruments provided by European-led Principal Investigator consortia and with important participation from NASA.Appendices are available in electronic form at http://www.aanda.org