Water masers in the Local Group of galaxies

Abstract

We compare the number of detected 22 GHz H2O masers in the Local Group galaxies M31, M33, NGC6822, IC10, IC1613, DDO187, GR8, NGC185, and the Magellanic Clouds with the water maser population of the Milky Way. To accomplish this we searched for water maser emission in the two Local Group galaxies M33 and NGC6822 using the Very Large Array (VLA) and incorporated results from previous studies. We observed 62 HII regions in M33 and 36 regions with H-alpha emission in NGC6822. Detection limits are 0.0015 and 0.0008 Lsun for M33 and NGC6822, respectively (corresponding to 47 and 50 mJy in three channels with 0.7 km/s width). M33 hosts three water masers above our detection limit, while in NGC6822 no maser source was detected. We find that the water maser detection rates in the Local Group galaxies M31, M33, NGC6822, IC1613, DDO187, GR8, NGC185, and the Magellanic Clouds are consistent with expectations from the Galactic water masers if one considers the different star formation rates of the galaxies. However, the galaxy IC10 exhibits an overabundance of masers, which may result from a compact central starburst.

arXiv commentAstronomy & Astrophysics, accepted, 9 pages, 9 figures, also available at http://www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/staff/abrunthaler/pub.shtml

References in corpus (15)

• Dwarf Galaxies of the Local Group
• Radioactive 26Al and massive stars in the Galaxy
• The Distance to the Perseus Spiral Arm in the Milky Way
• Star Formation Properties of a Large Sample of Irregular Galaxies
• Water maser motions in W3(OH) and a determination of its distance
• The Geometric Distance and Proper Motion of the Triangulum Galaxy (M33)
• A warped disk model for M33 and the 21-cm line width in spiral galaxies
• The spiral galaxy M33 mapped in the FIR by ISOPHOT: A spatially resolved study of the warm and cold dust
• Extragalactic H_2O masers and X-ray absorbing column densities
• The stellar population and interstellar medium in NGC 6822
• Constraints on the Proper Motion of the Andromeda Galaxy Based on the Survival of Its Satellite M33
• The star formation history of the Local Group dwarf elliptical galaxy NGC 185: II. Gradients in the stellar population
• Determination of the Distance to M33 Based on Single Epoch I-band HST Observations of Cepheids
• The IC133 Water Vapor Maser in the Galaxy M33: A Geometric Distance
• Monitoring water masers in star-forming regions

Cited by in corpus (17)

• Interstellar water chemistry: from laboratory to observations
• M31 Transverse Velocity and Local Group Mass from Satellite Kinematics
• The Proper Motion of the Local Group Galaxy IC 10
• Multibeam Maser Survey of methanol and excited OH in the Magellanic Clouds: new detections and maser abundance estimates
• Discovery of the first methanol (CH3OH) maser in the Andromeda galaxy (M31)
• New water masers in Seyfert and FIR bright galaxies. IV. Interferometric follow-ups
• Water Masers in the Andromeda Galaxy: The First Step Toward Proper Motion
• A Search for H2O Megamasers in High-z Type-2 AGNs
• Accurate Extra-Galactic Distances and Dark Energy: Anchoring the Distance Scale with Rotational Parallaxes
• Survey for Distant Stellar Aggregates in Galactic Disk: Detecting Two Thousand Star Clusters and Candidates, along with the Dwarf Galaxy IC10
• Massive young stellar objects in the Local Group irregular galaxy NGC6822 identified using machine learning
• New H2O masers in Seyfert and FIR bright galaxies. III. The Southern Sample
• Discovery of four water masers in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Water Masers in the Andromeda Galaxy: I. A Survey for Water Masers, Ammonia, and Hydrogen Recombination Lines
• Sardinia Radio Telescope observations of Local Group dwarf galaxies -- I. The cases of NGC6822, IC1613, and WLM
• Evidence for Coupling of Evolved Star Atmospheres and Spiral Arms of the Milky Way
• A sensitive search for water masers associated with star formation regions in the Local Group galaxy NGC 6822