Unusually Powerful Flare Phenomenon of the Water Maser in W51 and the Possibility of Detecting Gravitational Radiation from It

Abstract

Because of detailed monitoring of the 22.2 GHz water maser, carried out from 2021 October to 2023 May, a very powerful flare phenomenon was detected in the galactic object W51 near the radial velocity of 60 km s−1 with the amplitude of 140 kJy. A phenomenon of this magnitude was unprecedented in the entire history of observations of the source. Eleven short flares were recorded. The exponential increase and decrease in the flare flux density while reducing in their spectral line widths indicated that water masers were in an unsaturated state during the flares. All flares were located at the top of the less powerful Flare 0 with the amplitude of 13.5 kJy and the spectral line half-width of 3.0 km s−1. Such a wide line of the water maser, as well as the amplitude, of the flare phenomenon are so far unique discoveries. The water maser of Flare 0 may have been saturated and created a significant input flux density for other flares of this phenomenon. The extremely high density of maser spots in a cluster led to their partial overlap on the observer’s line of sight. This also confirmed the hypothesis about the need for a significant length of the path along which the generation of maser radiation occurs. New parameters of water masers and the most important physical conclusions have been obtained. The possibility of detecting gravitational waves from massive binary stars at the stage of evolution close to merging is considered for the case of W51 Main.