Stellar positions from SiO masers in the Galactic center

Lorant O. Sjouwerman(1,2,3) & Huib Jan van Langevelde(3) & Philip J. Diamond(4)


(1) Onsala Rymdobservatorium, S - 439 92 Onsala, Sweden
(2) Sterrewacht Leiden, P.O. Box 9513, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
(3) Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe, P.O. Box 2, 7990 AA Dwingeloo, The Netherlands
(4) N.R.A.O. Array Operations Center, P.O. Box 0, Socorro NM 87801, U.S.A.

Paper: Astronomy and Astrophysics, in press

Weblink: http://www.nfra.nl/jive/jive/preprints/pre_pub.html


Abstract:

We report on the possibility of determining milli-arcsecond accurate positions (relative to Sgr A*) for 43 GHz SiO masers located at the Galactic center. The SiO masers were found in OH/IR stars in a previous Very Large Array survey. We used the Very Long Baseline Array and the phased Very Large Array in a phase-referencing scheme with a cycle time of 40 seconds. The continuum source Sgr A* is used as phase-reference source. Because of the atmospheric phase instability at 43 GHz and sensitivity considerations, only 2 sources (from 10) were detected. However, we show that reliable positions can be obtained with calculable errors, which allows one to measure the proper motion of these stars accurate to ~30 km/sec in 5 years.


Preprints available from the authors at sjouwerman@jive.nfra.nl , or the raw TeX (no figures) if you click here.

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