Poster Presentation
Monitoring of Methanol Masers in G45.57-0.12
Jerold Young
Faculty Mentor: Esteban Araya
Physics
Massive star forming regions contain organic molecules such as methanol and formaldehyde. Some of these organic molecules emit a special type of non-thermal radiation known as a maser. Masers have proven to be a useful tool to detect interesting phenomena in the cosmos such as molecular outflows from massive star forming regions. Interstellar masers can be classified in two groups depending on their time variability, i.e., their flux density versus time behavior. High-variability masers significantly change brightness at timescales of days to months, while a non-variable (or low-variability) masers maintain their flux density relatively constant over timescales of months to years. The goal of this project is to characterize the variability behavior of 6.7
GHz methanol masers in the massive star forming region G45.57- 0.12 by analyzing a sequence of observations conducted with the 305m Arecibo Radio Telescope. Our results show that the flux density of methanol masers in G45.57- 0.12 changes little over time, and thus, G45.57-0.12 is low-variability maser region which can be used as system checking source (control source) in future variability studies of massive star forming regions