Astrometry of H$_2$O masers in the massive star--forming region IRAS 06061+2151 with VERA

TL;DR

This study precisely measured the distance to the star-forming region IRAS 06061+2151 using VERA's water maser observations, revealing its location in the Perseus arm and its significant peculiar motion contrary to Galactic rotation.

Contribution

First high-accuracy parallax measurement of IRAS 06061+2151 using VERA, improving distance estimates and revealing its peculiar motion in the Galaxy.

Findings

Distance to IRAS 06061+2151 is 2.02 kpc with high precision.

IRAS 06061+2151 exhibits a peculiar motion >15 km/s counter to Galactic rotation.

Sources in the Perseus arm share similar large peculiar motions.

Abstract

We measured the trigonometric annual parallax of H$_2$O maser source associated with the massive star-forming regions IRAS 06061+2151 with VERA. The annual parallax of $0.496\pm0.031$ mas corresponding to a distance of $2.02^{+0.13}_{-0.12}$ kpc was obtained by 10 epochs of observations from 2007 October to 2009 September. This distance was obtained with a higher accuracy than the photometric distance previously measured, and places IRAS 06061+2151 in the Perseus spiral arm. We found that IRAS 06061+2151 also has a peculiar motion of larger than 15 km s$^{-1}$ counter to the Galactic rotation. That is similar to five sources in the Perseus spiral arm, whose parallaxes and proper motions have already been measured with higher accuracy. Moreover, these sources move at on average 27 km s$^{-1}$ toward the Galactic center and counter to the Galactic rotation.