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Ubiquitous Water Masers in Nearby Star-Forming Galaxies

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Jeremy Darling1, Crystal Brogan2 and Kelsey Johnson3,4

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We report the detection of water maser emission from four nearby galaxies hosting ultradense H II (UDHII) regions, He 2-10, the Antennae galaxies (NGC 4038/4039), NGC 4214, and NGC 5253, with the Green Bank Telescope. Our detection rate is 100%, and all of these H2O "kilomasers" (LH2O < 10 Lsun) are located toward regions of known star formation as traced by UDHII regions and bright 24 μm emission. Some of the newly discovered H2O masers have luminosities 1-2 orders of magnitude less than previous extragalactic studies and the same order of magnitude as those typical of Galactic massive star-forming regions. The unusual success of this minisurvey suggests that H2O maser emission may be very common in starburst galaxies, and the paucity of detections to date is due to a lack of sufficient sensitivity. While the galaxy sample was selected by the presence of UDHII regions, and the UDHII regions lie within the telescope beam, in the absence of H2O spectral line maps the connection between H2O masers and UDHII regions has not yet been demonstrated.

Subject headings

galaxies: interactions; galaxies: ISM; galaxies: star clusters; galaxies: starburst; masers; radio lines: galaxies


Dates

Issue 1 (2008 September 20)

Received 2008 July 2, accepted for publication 2008 August 6

Published 2008 August 21



  1. Ubiquitous Water Masers in Nearby Star-Forming Galaxies

    Jeremy Darling et al 2008 ApJ 685 L39

  2. Faint Emission Lines and Temperature Fluctuations in M8

    César Esteban et al. 1999 ApJS 120 113

  3. The free-electron laser harmonic cascade

    L Giannessi and P Musumeci 2006 New J. Phys. 8 294

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