Dust, HII and molecules towards OH and H2O masers

Abstract

Radio synthesis observations made with the BIMA interferometer at 29, 86 and 216 GHz are presented for twelve galactic fields containing multiple interstellar OH and H2O maser sites. A dusty molecular cloud was found at 20 of the 23 maser sites in the fields studied. The clouds have masses in the range 50 to 800 M⊙ and diameters between 0.1 and 0.5 pc.The data show that most masers are located near the centers of massive, dusty molecular cores. The cores appear to be centrally condensed and internally excited. These results suggest that most masers found in star-forming regions are associated with a massive young object at the center of a collapsing molecular cloud. The kinematics of the core gas, and association with ultra-compact HII regions, implies that the duration of the maser phase includes collapse, expansion and early formation of an HII region.