Intrinsic Sizes of the W3 (OH) Masers via Short Time Scale Variability

Abstract

AbstractWe present a study of short time-scale variability of OH masers within a contiguous 15-hour Very Long Baseline Array observation of the high-mass star-forming region, W3 (OH). With an angular resolution of ~7 mas and a velocity resolution of 53 m s−1, we isolate emission from masers in the field into individual Gaussian-shaped components, each a few milliarcseconds in size. We compute dynamic spectra for individual maser features with a time resolution of 1 minute by fitting for the flux density of all sources in the field simultaneously in the uv-domain. We isolate intrinsic maser variability from interstellar scintillation and instrumental effects. We find fluctuations in the maser line shape on time scales of 5 to 20 minutes, corresponding to maser column lengths of 0.5 to 2.0 Astronomical Units.