The Maser Monitoring Organisation is a collection of researchers exploring the use of time-variable maser emission in the investigation of astrophysical phenomena. The forward directed aspects of research primarily involve using maser emission as a tool to investigate star formation. Simultaneously, these activities have deepened knowledge of maser emission itself in addition to uncovering previously unknown maser transitions. Thus a feedback loop is created where both the knowledge of astrophysical phenomena and the utilised tools of investigation themselves are iteratively sharpened. The project goals are open-ended and constantly evolving, however, the reliance on radio observatory maser monitoring campaigns persists as the fundamental enabler of research activities within the group.

Recently, remarkable progress has been made in understanding the formation of high mass stars. Observations provided direct evidence that massive young stellar objects (MYSOs), analogously to low-mass ones, form via disk-mediated accretion accompanied by episodic accretion bursts, possibly caused by disk fragmentation. In the case of MYSOs, the mechanism theoretically provides a means to overcome radiation pressure, but in practice it is poorly studied - only three accretion bursts in MYSOs have been caught in action to date. A significant contribution to the development of the theory has been made with the study of masers, which have proven to be a powerful tool for locating “bursting” MYSOs. This overview focuses on the exceptional role that masers play in the search and study of accretion bursts in massive protostars.

We present the trigonometric parallax, proper motion, and structure of three methanol masers from the Southern Hemisphere Parallax Interferometric Radio Astrometry Legacy Project (SπRALS). All three masers have better than 5% parallax accuracy, which we attribute to the new inverse MultiView calibration technique.

Many astrophysical phenomena can only be studied in detail for objects in our galaxy, the Milly Way, but we know much more about the structure of thousands of nearby galaxies than we do about our own Galaxy. Accurate distance measurements in the Milky Way underpin our ability to understand a wide range of astrophysical phenomena and this requires observations from both the northern and southern hemisphere. Our ability to measure accurate parallaxes to southern masers has been hampered a range of factors, in particular the absence of a dedicated, homogeneous VLBI array in the south. We have recently made significant advances in astrometric calibration techniques which allow us to achieve trigonometric parallax accuracies of around 10 micro-arcseconds (μas) for 6.7 GHz methanol masers with a hetrogeneous array of 4 antennas. We outline the details of this new “multiview” technique and present the first trigonometric parallax measurements that utilise this approach.

We report progress on research relating to 36.2 GHz extragalactic class I methanol masers, including a review of published work and new observations at high angular resolution. These observations reveal that extragalactic class I masers are excited in shocked gas and maybe associated with starbursts, galactic-scale outflows from active galactic nuclei (AGNs) feedback, or the inner-end region of the galactic bar. The current observational results suggests that extragalactic class I methanol masers provide a new probe for starbursts and feedback in active galaxies.

NGC 253 is one of the closest starburst galaxies to the Milky Way and as such it has been studied in detail across the electromagnetic spectrum. Recent observations have detected the first extragalactic class I methanol masers at 36 and 44 GHz and the first extragalactic HC3N (cyanoacetylene) masers in this source. Here we discuss the location of the masers with respect to key morphological features within NGC 253 and the association between the masers and the ongoing starburst.

We have detected maser emission from the 36.2 GHz (4−1 → 30E) methanol transition towards NGC 4945. This emission has been observed in two separate epochs and is approximately five orders of magnitude more luminous than typical emission from this transition within our Galaxy. NGC 4945 is only the fourth extragalactic source observed hosting class I methanol maser emission. Extragalactic class I methanol masers do not appear to be simply highly-luminous variants of their galactic counterparts and instead appear to trace large-scale regions where low-velocity shocks are present in molecular gas.

The Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) participated in a number of survey programs to search for and image common class I methanol masers (at 36 and 44 GHz) with high angular resolution. In this paper, we discuss spatial and velocity distributions revealed by these surveys. In particular, the number of maser regions is found to fall off exponentially with the linear distance from the associated young stellar object traced by the 6.7-GHz maser, and the scale of this distribution is 263±15 milliparsec. Although this relationship still needs to be understood in the context of the broader field, it can be utilised to estimate the distance using methanol masers only. This new technique has been analysed to understand its limitations and future potential. It turned out, it can be very successful to resolve the ambiguity in kinematic distances, but, in the current form, is much less accurate (than the kinematic method) if used on its own.

The RadioAstron space-VLBI mission has successfully detected extragalactic H2O MegaMaser emission regions at very long Earth to space baselines ranging between 1.4 and 26.7 Earth Diameters (ED). The preliminary results for two galaxies, NGC 3079 and NGC 4258, at baselines longer than one ED indicate masering environments and excitation conditions in these galaxies that are distinctly different. Further observations of NGC 4258 at even longer baselines are expected to reveal more of the physics of individual emission regions.

The exclusive association of Class II methanol masers with high mass star formation regions and in turn spiral arms, makes them ideal tracers of spiral structure. The bright and compact nature of masers also makes them good sources for Very Long Baseline Interferometry, with their fluxes visible on some of the longest terrestrial baselines. The success of the BeSSeL (Bar and Spiral Structure Legacy) project has demonstrated the use of masers in large scale high–precision trigonometric parallax surveys. This survey was then able to precisely map the spiral arms visible from the Northern Hemisphere and recalculate the fundamental Milky Way parameters R0 and θ0. The majority of the Milky Way is visible from the Southern Hemisphere and at the present time the Australian LBA (Long Baseline Array) is the only Southern Hemisphere array capable of taking high–precision trigonometric parallax data. We present the progress–to–date of the Southern Hemisphere experiment. We will also unveil a new broadband Southern Hemisphere array, capable of much faster parallax turnaround and atmospheric calibration.

We applied three statistical classification techniques—linear discriminant analysis (LDA), logistic regression, and random forests—to three astronomical datasets associated with searches for interstellar masers. We compared the performance of these methods in identifying whether specific mid-infrared or millimetre continuum sources are likely to have associated interstellar masers. We also discuss the interpretability of the results of each classification technique. Non-parametric methods have the potential to make accurate predictions when there are complex relationships between critical parameters. We found that for the small datasets the parametric methods logistic regression and LDA performed best, for the largest dataset the non-parametric method of random forests performed with comparable accuracy to parametric techniques, rather than any significant improvement. This suggests that at least for the specific examples investigated here accuracy of the predictions obtained is not being limited by the use of parametric models. We also found that for LDA, transformation of the data to match a normal distribution led to a significant improvement in accuracy. The different classification techniques had significant overlap in their predictions; further astronomical observations will enable the accuracy of these predictions to be tested.

Determining an evolutionary clock for high-mass star formation is an important step towards realising a unified theory of star formation, as it will enable qualitative studies of the associated high-mass stars to be executed. We have carried out detailed studies of a large number of sources suspected of undergoing high-mass star formation and have found that common maser transitions offer the best opportunity to determine an evolutionary scheme for these objects. We have investigated the relative evolutionary phases of massive star formation associated with the presence or absence of combinations of water, methanol and main-line hydroxyl masers. The locations of the different maser species have been compared with the positions of 1.2 mm dust clumps, radio continuum, GLIMPSE point sources and Extended Green Objects. Comparison between the characteristics of coincident sources has revealed strong evidence for an evolutionary sequence for the different maser species in high-mass star formation regions. We present our proposed sequence for the presence of the common maser species associated with young high-mass stars and highlight recent advances. We discuss future investigations that will be made in this area by comparing data from the Methanol Multibeam (MMB) Survey with chemical clocks from the Millimetre Astronomy Legacy Team 90 GHz (MALT90) Survey.

The Australia Telescope Compact Array has been used to observe all the 603 6.7 GHz methanol masers detected in the Methanol Multi-Beam survey between l = 310° - 20°. To date we have measured positions with arcsecond accuracy for all the observations in the l = 6° - 20°.

We have used the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) to make a sensitive search for maser emission from the 4765-MHz transition of OH towards a sample of 55 star formation regions. Maser emission with peak flux densities in excess of 100 mJy were detected in 14 sites, with 10 of these being new discoveries. Unlike the ground-state OH transitions the 4765-MHz transition is not predicted to be circularly polarised and none of the masers observed have detectable levels of linear, or circular polarisation. Combining our results with those of previous high resolution observations of other OH transitions we are able to investigate various theoretical models for the pumping of OH masers.

Current models of class II methanol masers are able to describe the brightnesses of the strongest masers and provide a basis for explaining observed line ratios. Determination of the physical parameters in the source requires observational data in many maser transitions. In order to provide observational constraints for models we searched for and detected 7 new methanol masers. This allowed us to constrain the physical parameters of the 3 sources with the greatest number of detected methanol maser lines: W3(OH), NGC6334F, and G345.01 + 1.79. The models accurately account for the fluxes of the bulk of the detected maser lines. Remaining discrepancies most probably reflect the fact that the most prominent components of the different maser lines are formed under different conditions. This is supported by comparison of the line profiles. We outline directions for future studies in the field.

The Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) has been used to make the first full polarization observations of 6.7 GHz methanol masers. Linear polarization was detected towards all four sources observed, at levels between a few and 10%, while none of the sources show circular polarization stronger than approximately 1.5%. Linear polarization appears to be more common in the 6.7 GHz methanol maser transition than it is for the 12.2 GHz transition, consistent with the hypothesis that the 6.7 GHz masers are more saturated.