Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T08:09:22.319Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Precise Positions of Methanol Masers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2013

J. L. Caswell*
Affiliation:
ATNF, CSIRO, PO Box 76, Epping, NSW 2121. Email: [email protected]
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) has been used to determine positions for many southern methanol maser sites, with accuracy better than 1 arcsec. The results are presented here as a catalogue of more than 350 distinct sites, some of them new discoveries, and many others with positional precision 10-times better than existing published values. Clusters of 2 or 3 sites are occasionally found to account for single previously listed sources. This in turn reveals that the velocity range for each individual site is sometimes smaller than that of the originally tabulated (blended) source. Only a handful of examples then remain with a velocity range of more than 16 km s−1 at a single compact (less than 2 arcsec) site. The precise methanol positions now allow apparent coincidences with OH masers to be confidently accepted or rejected; this has led to the important conclusion that, where a 1665-MHz OH maser lies in a massive star formation region, at more than 80 percent of the OH sites there is a precisely coincident methanol maser. The methanol precision achieved here will also allow clear comparisons with likely associated IR sources when the next generation of far-IR surveys produce precise positions.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Astronomical Society of Australia 2009

References

Argon, A. L., Reid, M. J. & Menten, K. M., 2000, ApJS, 129, 227 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caswell, J. L., 1996a, MNRAS, 279, 79 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caswell, J. L., 1996b, MNRAS, 283, 606 Google Scholar
Caswell, J. L., 1997, MNRAS, 289, 20 Google Scholar
Caswell, J. L., 1998, MNRAS, 297, 215 Google Scholar
Caswell, J. L., 2001, MNRAS, 326, 805 Google Scholar
Caswell, J. L., 2003, MNRAS, 341, 551 Google Scholar
Caswell, J. L., 2004a, MNRAS, 351, 279 Google Scholar
Caswell, J. L., 2004b, MNRAS, 349, 99 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caswell, J. L., 2004c, MNRAS, 352, 101 Google Scholar
Caswell, J. L. & Phillips, C. J., 2008, MNRAS, 386, 1521 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caswell, J. L., Vaile, R. A., Ellingsen, S. P., Whiteoak, J. B. & Norris, R. P., 1995a, MNRAS, 272, 96 Google Scholar
Caswell, J. L., Vaile, R. A. & Forster, J. R., 1995b, MNRAS, 277, 210 Google Scholar
Caswell, J. L., Vaile, R. A. & Ellingsen, S. P., 1995c, PASA, 12, 37 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crovisier, J., Fillit, R. & Kazes, I., 1973, A&A, 27, 417 Google Scholar
Dame, T. M. & Thaddeus, P., 2008, ApJ, 683, L143 Google Scholar
Ellingsen, S. P., von Bibra, M. L., McCulloch, P. M., Norris, R. P., Deshpande, A. A. & Phillips, C. J., 1996, MNRAS, 355, 553 Google Scholar
Forster, J. R. & Caswell, J. L., 1989, A&A, 213, 339 Google Scholar
Forster, J. R. & Caswell, J. L., 1999, A&AS, 137, 43 Google Scholar
Forster, J. R. & Caswell, J. L., 2000, ApJ, 530, 371 Google Scholar
Green, J. A. et al., 2009a, MNRAS, 392, 783 Google Scholar
Green, J. A., McClure-Griffiths, N. M., Caswell, J. L., Ellingsen, S. P., Fuller, G. A., Quinn, L. & Voronkov, M. A., 2009b, ApJ, 696, L156 Google Scholar
Houghton, S. & Whiteoak, J. B., 1995, MNRAS, 273, 1033 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacLeod, G. C., van der Walt, D. J., North, A., Gaylard, M. J., Galt, J. A. & Moriarty-Schieven, G. H., 1998, AJ, 116, 2936 Google Scholar
Pandian, J. D., Goldsmith, P. F. & Deshpande, A. A., 2007, ApJ, 656, 255 Google Scholar
Pestalozzi, M. R., Minier, V. & Booth, R. S., 2005, A&A, 432, 737 Google Scholar
Walsh, A. J., Burton, M. G., Hyland, A. R. & Robinson, G., 1998, MNRAS, 301, 640 Google Scholar