[136.01] Motions of Water Masers toward Class I Protostar YLW16A

AAS 205th Meeting, 9-13 January 2005
Session 136 Classy I and II Protostars
Poster, Thursday, January 13, 2005, 9:20am-4:00pm, Exhibit Hall

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[136.01] Motions of Water Masers toward Class I Protostar YLW16A

C. M. Simpson (Wellesley College and NRAO), M. J. Claussen (NRAO), B. A. Wilking (Univ. of Missouri-St. Louis), H. A. Wootten (NRAO), K. B. Marvel (AAS)

We present three epochs of phase referenced VLBA observations of water masers toward Class I protostar YLW16A, which is located in the \rho Ophiuchus cloud. We determine absolute positions of the strongest maser and show that the absolute motion is due to the parallax, global motion of the cloud, and the proper motion of the maser itself. Assuming that the \rho Ophiuchus cloud is 150 pc distant, and estimating the global motion of the cloud via Hipparcos stellar proper motions, we estimate the proper motion of the strong maser reference feature to be 6.2+/-3.5 kms^-1. Combined with the radial velocity of this feature, we find the space motion to be 14.8+/-3.5 kms^-1 and the angle of inclination to the plane of the sky to be 65+/-12 degrees. We also track the motion of a weaker maser between epochs.

The NRAO is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. Part of this research was carried out under the auspices of the National Science Foundation's Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program at the NRAO, and we gratefully acknowledge the funding for this program.

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