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Patterns in water maser emission of evolved stars on the timescale of decades
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 February 2024
Abstract
We present our past and current long-term monitoring program of water masers in the circumstellar envelopes of evolved stars, augmented by occasional interferometric observations. Using as example the Mira-variable U Her, we identify three types of variability: periodic (following the optical variation), long-term (years-decades) and short-term irregular (weeks-months). We show there are regions in the maser shell where excitation conditions are favourable, which remain stable for many years. Lifetimes of maser clouds in the wind-acceleration zone are of the order of up to a few years. Much longer lifetimes are found for the peculiar case of a maser cloud outside that zone (as in RT Vir), or in some cases where the motion of spectral features can be followed for the entire 2 decade monitoring period (as in red supergiant VX Sgr).
- Type
- Contributed Paper
- Information
- Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 18 , Symposium S380: Cosmic Masers: Proper Motion toward the Next-Generation Large Projects , December 2022 , pp. 319 - 323
- Creative Commons
- This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
- Copyright
- © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of International Astronomical Union