Formation and evolution of the water maser outflow event in AFGL 2591 VLA 3-N

Abstract

In this paper we analyze multi-epoch Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) water maser observations carried out with the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) toward the high-mass star-forming region AFGL 2591. We detected maser emission associated with the radio continuum sources VLA 2 and VLA 3. In addition, a water maser cluster, VLA 3-N, was detected ~ 0.5" north of VLA 3. We concentrate the discussion of this paper on the spatio-kinematical distribution of the water masers towards VLA 3-N. The water maser emission toward the region VLA 3-N shows two bow shock-like structures, Northern and Southern, separated from each other by ~ 100 mas (~ 330 AU). The spatial distribution and kinematics of the water masers in this cluster have persisted over a time span of seven years. The Northern bow shock has a somewhat irregular morphology, while the Southern one has a remarkably smooth morphology. We measured the proper motions of 33 water maser features, which have an average proper motion velocity of ~ 1.3 mas/yr (~ 20 km/s). The morphology and the proper motions of this cluster of water masers show systematic expanding motions that could imply one or two different centers of star formation activity. We made a detailed model for the Southern structure, proposing two different kinematic models to explain the 3-dimensional spatio-kinematical distribution of the water masers: (1) a static central source driving the two bow-shock structures; (2) two independent driving sources, one of them exciting the Northern bow-shock structure, and the other one, a young runaway star moving in the local molecular medium exciting and molding the remarkably smoother Southern bow-shock structure. Future observations will be necessary to discriminate between the two scenarios, in particular by identifying the still unseen driving source(s).