Masers in High Mass Star Forming Regions: Tracers of disks and/or jets?

J. UMANZOR, M. GOMEZ

Isla de Margarita

Congreso; XII Latin American IAU Regional Meeting; 2007

IAU

Recent observations of high angular resolution have allowed to detect emissions of masers of several molecular species around young stellar objects of high mass. At the present time, several investigations are trying to establish the roll that masers might play in the formation process of such stars. Studies of individual regions indicate that masers may trace the disk or the jet associated with young massive protostars. In some cases, masers can also trace both type of structures (disks and jets) at the same time. In this contribution we present results of a statistical study of the distributions of masers emissions of methanol, hydroxyl and water in a sample of 29 massive star forming regions. Individual alignments and physical relations with disk and/or jet structures for each case are especially analyzed. The results of our study indicate that the emissions of masers surrounding young massive protostars tend to form groups that in a very high percentage show linear or elongated morphologies. The linearity of the distributions of masers is a frequent phenomenon and is consistent with the fact that masers tend to align or are physically related to disks and jets. However we did not find a significant preference of masers of methanol, hydroxyl and water to align with disks or jets. In general, masers tend to align with both type of structures (disks and jets) in similar proportions. We only found a slight tendency of water masers to trace jets. This tendency should be confirmed analyzing a larger sample of regions.