Three-month Monitoring of the Variability toward W51 IRS2 with Ammonia, Water, and Methanol Transitions

Abstract

A four-epoch monitoring program spanning ∼three months (from 2020 January 8 to April 7) for ammonia, water, and methanol transitions toward the high-mass star-forming region W51 IRS2 was conducted using the Shanghai 65 m Tianma Radio Telescope with its K-band (18–26.5 GHz) receiver. In total, 33 ammonia transitions and 16 methanol transitions were detected toward the target at least once during this monitoring program. Among them, 14 ammonia and 4 methanol transitions show maser emission characteristics. Rapid variabilities (including both increases and decreases) in the ammonia and methanol transitions were detected from both maser and thermal emissions during the three months of the monitoring. In addition, H2O masers with obvious variability were also detected. The results of the rotation diagram analysis for the ammonia and methanol quasi-thermal transitions show the variations in their rotational temperatures during the monitoring. The derived temperatures from the transitions with larger upper energies (E u /κ) generally decreased over the whole monitoring period, from January 8 to April 7, but those with smaller E u /κ first increased from January 8 to April 1, then rapidly decreased from April 1 to April 7. These findings support the suggestion that an inside-out heatwave propagation in W51 IRS2 was involved with the accretion burst over a short duration (only on the order of months) and caused the drastic variability behaviors of the different line transitions during high-mass star formation.