Extremely powerful flare phenomenon of H2O maser in W49N near −40 km s−1

Abstract

ABSTRACT As a result of detailed observations of the water vapour maser at the 22-m Simeiz radio telescope from 2017 June to 2019 December, two powerful flares were recorded in the Galactic source W49N, which occurred near the high-velocity feature −40 km s−1. The extremely powerful flare had an ultrashort duration of about 2 d and reached a flux density of 110 kJy. An ultrashort flare occurred at the top of a less powerful, but ten times longer one. To our knowledge, a flare of a water maser with such extreme characteristics has never been reported before. A correlation between the exponential increase and decrease in the flare flux density and decrease in line widths with increasing flux density, which is characteristic of an unsaturated maser, is found. The maser of the third flare was in a saturated state and provided a large input flux density 9.5 kJy for the occurrence of two powerful flares, the masers of which were in an unsaturated state. New data have been obtained concerning the physical characteristics of the water maser phenomenon during powerful flares.