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Kinematics and Distance of Water Masers in W3 IRS 5

Authors :
Shinji Horiuchi
Shuji Deguchi
Makoto Miyoshi
Osamu Kameya
Hiroshi Imai
Yoshiharu Asaki
Tetsuo Sasao
Source :
The Astrophysical Journal. 538:751-765
Publication Year :
2000
Publisher :
American Astronomical Society, 2000.

Abstract

We have made multiepoch VLBA observations of water masers in the massive-star forming region W3 IRS 5. We measured radial velocities and proper motions of 108 water maser features during three observing sessions. The masers are clustered in two groups, which are associated with at least two different outflows. Positions of the outflow origins are close to the hypercompact radio continuum sources, which are clustered within a scale of 6000 AU. The continuum sources are probably driving sources of the outflows. We performed a three-dimensional kinematic model analysis of the maser motions in one of the two outflows, assuming a spherically symmetric expanding flow. We obtained a distance to the W3 IRS 5 region as 1.83 ? 0.14 kpc. The directions of the two outflows are roughly in the north-south direction, which is not significantly different from the direction of the global outflow seen in CO (J = 2-1) emission. This suggests that the massive-star cluster in the W3 IRS 5 region was created during formation of hierarchical structure in a parent molecular-cloud core. Such a structure is expected to preserve the angular momentum vector during star formation process, which may be along the directions of the present outflows.

Details

ISSN :
15384357 and 0004637X
Volume :
538
Database :
OpenAIRE
Journal :
The Astrophysical Journal
Accession number :
edsair.doi...........a88ee9a9503724666987c5f302f27f2b
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1086/309165