Associations of water and methanol masers at milli-arcsec angular resolution in two high-mass young stellar objects

Abstract

Most previous high-angular (<0.1 arcsec) resolution studies of molecular masers in high-mass star forming regions (SFRs) have concentrated mainly on either water or methanol masers. While high-angular resolution observations have clarified that water masers originate from shocks associated with protostellar jets, different environments have been proposed in several sources to explain the origin of methanol masers. Tha aim of the paper is to investigate the nature of the methanol maser birthplace in SFRs and the association between the water and methanol maser emission in the same young stellar object. We have conducted phase-reference Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) observations of water and methanol masers toward two high-mass SFRs, Sh 2-255 IR and AFGL 5142. In Sh 2-255 IR water masers are aligned along a direction close to the orientation of the molecular outflow observed on angular scales of 1-10 arcsec, tracing possibly the disk-wind emerging from the disk atmosphere. In AFGL 5142 water masers trace expansion at the base of a protostellar jet, whilst methanol masers are more probably tracing infalling than outflowing gas. The results for AFGL 5142 suggest that water and methanol masers trace different kinematic structures in the circumstellar gas.