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A water maser survey towards the Galactic Centre

journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-17, 05:25 authored by Caswell, JL, Breen, SL, Simon EllingsenSimon Ellingsen
We have used the Australia Telescope Compact Array to survey the Galactic Centre for the 22-GHz transition of water. The survey provides an unbiased search for water masers within a 0.5 deg2 region about the Centre, and the small synthesized beam directly yields positions to arcsecond accuracy. The detected sources were re-observed 4 months later and showed considerable changes in their spectra, with two sources found in the follow-up that were not seen in the original survey, yielding a total of 27 maser detections. Comparison with methanol and OH surveys shows that, at current sensitivity levels, water masers greatly outnumber the other species. 12 of our maser detections had previously been reported, discovered during searches towards interesting targets in the survey area. Themajority of our sources are quite weak, consistent with excitation by young massive stars mostly near the Galactic Centre. Our spectra reveal high-velocity outflows at one-quarter of the water maser sites, a statistic similar to sites in the remainder of the Galaxy.

History

Publication title

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Volume

410

Pagination

1283-1294

ISSN

1365-2966

Department/School

School of Natural Sciences

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Place of publication

United Kingdom

Rights statement

The definitive published version is available online at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/

Repository Status

  • Restricted

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Expanding knowledge in the physical sciences

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