Analysis of H2O masers in Sharpless 269 using VERA archival data—Effect of maser structures on astrometric accuracy

Abstract

Astrometry using H2O maser sources in star forming regions is expected to be a powerful tool to study the structures and dynamics of our Galaxy. Honma et al. (2007) (hereafter H2007) claimed that the annual parallax of Sharpless 269 is determined within an error of 0.008marcs (mas), concluding that S269 is located at 5.3kpc ±0.2kpc from the sun, and its galactrocetnric distance is R=13.1kpc. From the proper motion, they claimed that the galacto-centric rotational velocity of S269 is equal to that of the sun within a 3% error. This small error, however, is hardly understood when taking into account the results of other observations and theoretical studies of galactic dynamics. We here reanalyzed the VERA archival data using the self calibration method (hybrid mapping), and found that clusters of maser features of S269 are distributed in much wider area than that investigated in H2007. We confirmed that, if we make a narrow region image without considering the presence of multiple maser spots, and only the phase calibration is applied, we can reproduce the same maser structures in a maser feature investigated in H2007. The distribution extent of maser spots in the feature differs 0.2mas from east to west between our results and H2007. Moreover, we found that change of relative positions of maser spots in the cluster reaches 0.1mas or larger between observational epochs. This suggests that if one simply assumes the time-dependent, widely distributed maser sources as a stable single point source, it could cause errors of up to 0.1 mas in the annual parallax of S269. Taking into account the internal motions of maser spot clusters, the proper motion of S269 cannot be determined precisely. We estimated that the peculiar motion of S269 with respect to a Galactic circular rotation is ∼20kms−1. These results imply that the observed kinematics of maser emissions in S269 cannot give a strong constraint on dynamics of the outer part of the Galaxy, in contrast to the claim by H2007.