A search for extragalactic H2O maser emission towards IRAS galaxies. 2. Discovery of an H2O maser in the Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 4051
Sep, 2003
5 pages
Published in:
- Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc. 344 (2003) L53
e-Print:
- astro-ph/0309690 [astro-ph]
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Abstract: (arXiv)
Water vapor maser emission in the 6_{16}-5_{23} transition towards the narrow-line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) galaxy NGC 4051 has been discovered during an ongoing single-dish extragalactic water maser survey. The Doppler-shifted maser components appear to bracket maser components lying near the systemic velocity of the galaxy symmetrically. The tentative result of a Very Large Array (VLA) snapshot observation is that the masers are confined within 0.1 arcsec (5 pc at a distance D = 9.7 Mpc) of the radio continuum peak seen at 8.4 GHz. The low luminosity of the maser (~2 Lsun) is not typical for masers that coincide with the radio continuum nucleus and appear associated with Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN) activity. A low-luminosity maser in a Type 1 Seyfert nucleus could be explained by a low maser gain resulting from the lower inclination of an obscuring disk around an active nucleus.References(17)
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