DOI

https://doi.org/10.48717/ecen-me14

Project

ED044

Title

Methanol maser variability as a tracer of episodic accretion.

Abstract

There is a growing evidence that bursts of the 6.7GHz methanol maser emission are triggered by brightening of the central source due to disc-mediated accretion bursts. These episodic phenomena are characterized by a huge increase in the maser flux density and transformation of the line profile where new features appeared while the others disappeared. The pre-burst phase is characterized by moderate variability associated with small bursting activity. We have carried out a survey of a large sample of methanol sources in order to identify bursting candidate objects. In this pilot study we propose to map four targets in order to examine the maser structure at mas scale, to derive the parameters of maser clouds and to look for possible changes in the source's morphology. The new data will be used to model the origin of variability.