Abstract
Water vapor may be one of the most abundant constituents of shocked molecular clouds. The nonequilibrium distribution of population among its rotational energy states requires the observation of a multiplicity of transitions to constrain its abundance and excitation state. Flux limits are presented for emission due to the (010) 4(14) - 3(21) rotational transition of ortho-H2O at 67.804 GHz in several nebular and stellar sources. Upper limits for a beam-averaged column density of H2O in its nu2 vibrational manifold are derived for Orion BN-KL. Constraints placed by these observations on an internal source of infrared radiation in the Orion shock are discussed.
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