DOI

https://doi.org/10.48717/y9a5-d441

Project

EB072

Title

EB072

Abstract

Episodic accretion may provide the long awaited key to explaining how massive stars overcome radiation pressure to accrete to masses above 8 Solar mass. However, accretion bursts are infrequent (up to 1000 yr timescales), therefore the accretion history of a massive star may be inferred from its ejection history. This powerful tool circumvents years of waiting for bursts as shock tracers can reveal 1000s of years of ejection history in a single image. This `historian approach' relies on the assumption that each accretion event produces an ejection event; the accretion-ejection relation. However, the existence of such a reltion has only ever been indirectly inferred. Our aim is to find the first direct evidence of the accretion-ejection relation by monitoring the 22 GHz water maser emission in S255IR-SMA1, a massive star that recently exhibited an accretion event. Our goal is straightforward: to observe the onset of jet formation in a massive embedded star following an accretion burst.