Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T01:35:30.080Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Radial Velocity Structure in OH and H2O Masers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2016

S. H. Knowles
S. H. Knowles*
Affiliation:
Division of Radiophysics, CSIRO, Sydney
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Since the discovery of highly masering OH emission, and later of H2O masers, there has been little progress made in understanding their geometry and structure. Although both OH and H2O spectra are highly complex, no one has been able to ‘decode’ the information from the many individual features. Knowles and Batchelor (1976) have recently suggested that many water vapour spectra have a symmetrical character, with one or more pairs of features equally spaced in radial velocity about a central axis. It is here proposed that a similar symmetry exists in HH-region OH masers as well as main-line OH stars such as VY CMa. We also demonstrate that features at close to the same radial velocity are often present in several different OH and H2O transitions and probably come from the same masering cloud. From this widely applicable empirical observational model we then make a few simple deductions about the possible geometry of such masering regions.

Type
Contributions
Information
Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , September 1976 , pp. 55 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © Astronomical Society of Australia 1976

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Balister, M., Gardner, F. F., Knowles, S. H., and Whiteoak, J. B., Proc. Astron. Soc. Aust., 3, 59, (1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldreich, P., In ‘Atom ic and Molecular Physics and the Interstellar Matter’ (Eds. Balian, Encrenaz and Lequeux), pp. 409–463 (North-Holland/American Elsevier) (1975).Google Scholar
Goss, W. M., Knowles, S. H., Balister, M., Batchelor, R. A., and Wellington, K. J., Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc, 174, 541 (1976).Google Scholar
Knowles, S. H., and Batchelor, R. A., MOM. Not. R. Astron. Soc, 174, P.69 (1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knowles, S. H., Goss, W. M., and Caswell, J. L., Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc, (in press) (1976).Google Scholar
Robinson, B. J., Caswell, J. L., and Goss, W. M., Aust. J. Phys., 27, 575 (1974).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sullivan, W.T. Ill, Astrophys. J. Suppl. Ser., 25, 393 (1973).Google Scholar
Turner, B. E., Palmer, P., and Zuckerman, B., Astrophys. J., 160, L125 (1970).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weaver, H., Dieter, N. H., and Williams, D. R. W, Astrophys. J. Suppl. Ser., 146, 219 (1968).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zuckerman, B., and Palmer, P., Astrophys. J., 159, L197 (1970).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zuckerman, B., Yen, J. L., Gottlieb, C. A., and Palmer, V., Astrophys. J., 177, 59 (1972).Google Scholar