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Register a new userNuclear Water Maser Emission in Centaurus A
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We report the detection of a 22GHz water maser line in the nearest (D~3.8Mpc) radio galaxy Centaurus A using the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA). The line is centered at a velocity of ~960kms-1, which is redshifted by about 400kms-1 from the systemic velocity. Such an offset, as well as the width of ~120kms-1, could be consistent with either a nuclear maser arising from an accretion disk of the central supermassive black hole, or for a jet maser that is emitted from the material that is shocked near the base of the jet in Centaurus,A. The best spatial resolution of our ATCA data constrains the origin of the maser feature within <3pc from the supermassive black hole. The maser exhibits a luminosity of ~1Lo, which classifies it as a kilomaser, and appears to be variable on timescales of months. A kilomaser can also be emitted by shocked gas in star forming regions. Given the small projected distance from the core, the large offset from systemic velocity, as well as the smoothness of the line feature, we conclude that a jet maser line emitted by shocked gas around the base of the AGN is the most likely explanation. For this scenario we can infer a minimum density of the radio jet of ~>10cm-3, which indicates substantial mass entrainment of surrounding gas into the propagating jet material.
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We report on annual parallax and proper motion observations of H2O masers in S235AB-MIR, which is a massive young stellar object in the Perseus Arm. Using multi-epoch VLBI astrometry we measured a parallax of pi = 0.63 +- 0.03 mas, corresponding to a trigonometric distance of D = 1.56+-0.09 kpc, and source proper motion of ( u alpha cos d , u d) = (0.79 +- 0.12, -2.41 +- 0.14) mas/yr. Water masers trace a jet of diameter 15 au which exhibits a definite radial velocity gradient perpendicular to its axis. 3D maser kinematics were well modelled by a rotating cylinder with physical parameters: v_out = 45+-2 km/s, v_rot = 22+-3 km/s, i = 12+-2 degrees, which are the outflow velocity, tangential rotation velocity and line-of-sight inclination, respectively. One maser feature exhibited steady acceleration which may be related to the jet rotation. During our 15 month VLBI programme there were three `maser burst events caught `in the act which were caused by the overlapping of masers along the line of sight.
In this paper I present dynamic models of the radio source Centaurus A, and critique possible models of in situ particle reacceleration (ISR) within the radio lobes. The radio and gamma-ray data require neither homogeneous plasma nor quasi-equipartition between plasma and magnetic field; inhomogeneous models containing both high-field and low-field regions are equally likely. Cen A cannot be as young as the radiative lifetimes of its relativistic electrons, which range from a few to several tens of Myr. Two classes of dynamic models -- flow driven and magnetically driven -- are consistent with current observations; each requires Cen A to be on the order of a Gyr old. Thus, ongoing ISR must be occurring within the radio source. Alfven-wave ISR is probably occurring throughout the source, and may be responsible for maintaining the gamma-ray-loud electrons. It is likely to be supplemented by shock or reconnection ISR which maintains the radio-loud electrons in high-field regions.
We have used the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) to search for emission from the $4_{-1} rightarrow 3_{0}E$ transition of methanol (36.2 GHz) towards the center of the nearby starburst galaxy NGC253. Two regions of emission were detected, offset from the nucleus along the same position angle as the inner spiral arms. The emission is largely unresolved on a scale of 5 arcsec, has a full-width half maximum (FWHM) line width of < 30 km s$^{-1}$, and an isotropic luminosity orders of magnitude larger than that observed in any Galactic star formation regions. These characteristics suggest that the 36.2 GHz methanol emission is most likely a maser, although observations with higher angular and spectral resolution are required to confirm this. If it is a maser this represents the first detection of a class I methanol maser outside the Milky Way. The 36.2 GHz methanol emission in NGC253 has more than an order of magnitude higher isotropic luminosity than the widespread emission recently detected towards the center of the Milky Way. If emission from this transition scales with nuclear star formation rate then it may be detectable in the central regions of many starburst galaxies. Detection of methanol emission in ultra-luminous infra-red galaxies (ULIRGs) would open up a new tool for testing for variations in fundamental constants (in particular the proton-to-electron mass ratio) on cosmological scales.
We present the results of observations of 22GHz H2O maser emission in NGC 6240 and M51 made with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array. Two major H2O maser features and several minor features are detected toward the southern nucleus of NGC 6240. These features are redshifted by about 300 km/s from the galaxys systemic velocity and remain unresolved at the synthesized beam size. A combination of our two-epoch observations and published data reveals an apparent correlation between the strength of the maser and the 22GHz radio continuum emission, implying that the maser excitation relates to the activity of an active galactic nucleus in the southern nucleus rather than star-forming activity. The star-forming galaxy M51 hosts H2O maser emission in the center of the galaxy; however, the origin of the maser has been an open question. We report the first detection of 22GHz nuclear radio continuum emission in M51. The continuum emission is co-located with the maser position, which indicates that the maser arises from active galactic nucleus-activity and not from star-forming activity in the galaxy.
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