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Highly polarized burst of a water maser in Orion-KL

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 August 2017

Shinji Horiuchi
Affiliation:
National Astronomical Observatory, Mitaka, Tokyo, Japan
Osamu Kameya
Affiliation:
National Astronomical Observatory, Mizusawa, Iwate, Japan

Abstract

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It has been reported that the 22 GHz water maser in the star forming region Orion-KL has started an outburst in rate 1997 (Omodaka et al. 1998, IAUC 6893). Using Mizusawa radio telescope we started a monitoring observation of the bursting maser. We measured the linear polarization of the maser after the burst, during a phase of rapid flux density decrease. We find that the total flux density of 2.4 × 106 Jy (December 1998) exhibits about 46% linear polarization. Over the next six months we find that the total intensity decrease about two orders of magnitude while the fractional linear polarization gradually fell to 30%. These results suggest that the present bursting phenomenon has an origin similar to the super maser event starting in 1979, and the phenomenon of the extremely bright masers in this region is geometric in nature and related to the strong magnetic field.

Type
Part 1. Star Formation
Copyright
Copyright © Astronomical Society of the Pacific 2002 

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