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J.M. De Buizer, R.K. Pina, C.M. Telesco (University of Florida Infrared Astrophysics Group)
We present the results of a mid-infrared survey of 21 sites exhibiting water maser emission in the 22 GHz rotational transition. Water masers are known signposts of sites of newly formed O and B stars, but in some cases they are associated with hot molecular cores, suggesting they exist in the youngest stages of stellar formation. Milli-arcsecond resolution radio studies have revealed positions and velocities of the water masers indicative of radial expansion from a single point. Radio continuum jets have also been observed to be associated with water masers. This suggests that, in these cases, the water masers trace outflows from the young stellar objects. The survey presented here was conducted at IRTF, and yielded detections of mid-infrared sources in 16 of the 21 sites. Astrometric accuracy is estimated to be better than 1 arcsecond. We find that 50% of the sites with mid-infrared detections contain multiple sources. Furthermore, a large percentage (88%) of these multiple source sites have water masers not directly coincident with a mid-infrared source, but instead are located between two sources. Typical mid-infrared source separations, in these cases, are approximately 45,000 AU.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: debuizer@astro.ufl.edu