AAS 201st Meeting, January, 2003
Session 89. Planetary Nebulae and Dusty Clouds
Poster, Wednesday, January 8, 2003, 9:20am-6:30pm, Exhibit Hall AB

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[89.10] The Water Maser Jet in the Preplanetary Nebula IRAS 16342-3814

M. J Claussen (National Radio Astronomy Observatory), R. Sahai (Jet Propulsion Laboratory / Caltech), M. Morris (Univ. California Los Angeles), C.-F. Lee (Jet Propulsion Laboratory / Caltech)

We report on proper motion observations of the water masers in the preplanetary nebula IRAS 16342-3814. We have used the Very Long Baseline Array simultaneously with the Very Large Array of the NRAO to make astrometric observations of the water masers once per month over a total time baseline of six months. The radial velocities of the masers, when combined with our proper motions, produce a three-dimensional spatio-kinematic probe of the outflow region. The projected velocities in the outflow reach up to 130 km s-1 from the systemic velocity. HST imaging of IRAS 16342-3814 shows a bipolar nebula with a dark waist separating two bright lobes; OH maser emission features with projected speeds up to 65 km s-1 (mapped with the VLA) are concentrated near and around the base of each lobe (Sahai et al. 1999). The water masers are concentrated in two regions beyond the lobes, along the polar axis. We will discuss the results of these high angular resolution observations in the context of models of shaping planetary nebulae with high-velocity collimated outflows impinging on the progenitor AGB envelope. Numerical hydrodynamic simulations of such models which reproduce the general morphology of the lobes and the kinematics of the OH and H2O maser emitting regions, will be presented.

The NRAO is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. R.S. and M.M. have been partially funded for this work through a NASA Long Term Sapce Astrophysics grant (no. 399-20-61-00-00).

Reference:

Sahai, R., te Lintel Hekkert, P., Morris, M., Zijlstra, A., & Likkel, L. 1999, ApJ, 514, L115


The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: mclausse@nrao.edu

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