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American Astronomical Society, Astronomical Journal, 3(153), p. 119, 2017

DOI: 10.3847/1538-3881/153/3/119

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Astrometry of OH/IR stars using 1612 MHz hydroxyl masers. I. Annual parallaxes of WX Psc and OH138.0+7.2

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

We report on the measurement of the trigonometric parallaxes of 1612 MHz hydroxyl masers around two asymptotic giant branch stars, WX Psc and OH138.0+7.2, using the NRAO Very Long Baseline Array with in-beam phase referencing calibration. We obtained a 3-sigma upper limit of ~190 pc. The obtained parallax of OH138.0+7.2 is 0.52+/-0.09 mas (+/-18%), corresponding to a distance of 1.9(+0.4,-0.3) kpc, making this the first hydroxyl maser parallax below one milliarcsecond. We also introduce a new method of error analysis for detecting systematic errors in the astrometry. Finally, we compare our trigonometric distances to published phase-lag distances toward these stars and find a good agreement between the two methods. ; Comment: Preprint, accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal (January 17, 2017)