Water Maser Motions in W3(OH) and a Determination of Its Distance

2005/12/31 by K. Hachisuka, Kazuya Hachisuka, A. Brunthaler +11 · 4 citations
Chemistry · Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Molecular Spectroscopy and Structure #astro-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/502962

published as Astrophys.J.645:337-344,2006 · 14 pages, 6 figures, accepted to ApJ

arxiv created 2006/01/25 · openalex publication_date 2006/07/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31

Abstract

We report phase-referencing VLBA observations of H 2 O masers near the star-forming region W3(OH) to measure their parallax and absolute proper motions. The measured annual parallax is 0.489 ± 0.017 mas (2.04 ± 0.07 kpc), where the error is dominated by a systematic atmospheric contribution. This distance is consistent with photometric distances from previous observations and with the distance determined from CH 3 OH maser astrometry presented in a related paper. We also find that the source driving the H 2 O outflow, the "TW-object," moves with a three-dimensional velocity of >7 km s -1 relative to the ultracompact H II region W3(OH).

Citations

• The Distance to the Perseus Spiral Arm in the Milky Way

Cited by

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• THE EVOLUTION OF THE MULTIPLICITY OF EMBEDDED PROTOSTARS. I. SAMPLE PROPERTIES AND BINARY DETECTIONS
• Observations of the Goldreich-Kylafis effect in star-forming regions with XPOL at the IRAM 30 m telescope