Comparison of two epochs of the zeeman effect in the 44 GHz class i methanol (CH 3OH) maser line in OMC-2

Abstract

We present a second epoch of observations of the 44 GHz Class I methanol maser line toward the star-forming region Orion Molecular Cloud 2. The observations were carried out with the Very Large Array, and constitute one of the first successful Zeeman effect detections with the new Wide-band Digital Architecture correlator. Comparing to the result of our earlier epoch of data for this region, we find that the intensity of the maser increased by 50%, but the magnetic field value has stayed the same, within the errors. This suggests that the methanol maser may be tracing the large-scale magnetic field that is not affected by the bulk gas motions or turbulence on smaller scales that is causing the change in maser intensity. © 2012. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.