A Masing Event in the Cat's Paw
Abstract
We present Kitty, an unprecedented and near simultaneous flaring event in ten transitions (6 hydroxyl, 1 water and 3 methanol), that began on 1 January 2015 in the massive star-forming region NGC6334F located in the Cat's Paw Nebula. The brightest components in each transition increased by factors of 20 to 70 in line with a factor of ~70 increase in dust emission luminosity for the source MM1. We also report the detection of only the fifth known 4.660 GHz hydroxyl maser and that it varied in a correlated fashion with 1.720, 6.031, and 6.035 GHz hydroxyl counterparts. We postulate that if Kitty, and two historical flares in 1965 & 1999, are accretion events and are caused by the successive passages of a secondary star disrupting the accretion disk, where the frequency of occurrence is cycling down at a rate of ~2.2, it is possible another event will occur in 2022.
- Publication:
-
Astrophysical Masers: Unlocking the Mysteries of the Universe
- Pub Date:
- August 2018
- DOI:
- Bibcode:
- 2018IAUS..336..293M
- Keywords:
-
- masers;
- stars:formation;
- radio lines:molecular:interstellar