Multi-epoch VERA Observations of H2O masers in OH 43.8-0.1
astro-ph
/ Authors
M. Honma, T. Bushimata, Y. K. Choi, T. Fujii, T. Hirota, K. Horiai, H. Imai, N. Inomata, J. Ishitsuka, K. Iwadate
and 26 more authors
T. Jike, O. Kameya, R. Kamohara, Y. Kan-ya, N. Kawaguchi, M. Kijima, H. Kobayashi, S. Kuji, T. Kurayama, S. Manabe, T. Miyaji, A. Nakagawa, K. Nakashima, C. S. Oh, T. Omodaka, T. Oyama, M. Rioja, S. Sakai, K. Sato, T. Sasao, K. M. Shibata, R. Shimizu, K. Sora, H. Suda,
/ Abstract
We report on the multi-epoch observations of H2O maser emission in star forming region OH 43.8-0.1 carried out with VLBI Exploration of Radio Astrometry (VERA). The large-scale maser distributions obtained by single-beam VLBI mapping reveal new maser spots scattered in area of 0.7 x 1.0 arcsec, in addition to a `shell-like' structure with a scale of 0.3 x 0.5 arcsec which was previously mapped by Downes et al.(1979). Proper motions are also obtained for 43 spots based on 5-epoch monitoring with a time span of 281 days. The distributions of proper motions show a systematic outflow in the north-south direction with an expansion velocity of ~8 km/s, and overall distributions of maser spots as well as proper motions are better represented by a bipolar flow plus a central maser cluster with a complex structure, rather than a shell with a uniform expansion such as those found in Cep A R5 and W75N VLA2. The distance to OH 43.8-0.1 is also estimated based on the statistical parallax, yielding D = 2.8 +/- 0.5 kpc. This distance is consistent with a near kinematic distance and rules out a far kinematics distance (~9 kpc), and the LSR velocity of OH 43.8-0.1 combined with the distance provides a constraint on the flatness of the galactic rotation curve, that there is no systematic difference in rotation speeds at the Sun and at the position of OH 43.8-0.1, which is located at the galacto-centric radius of ~6.3 kpc.