Abstract
Observations of NH3 toward the W51 complex were conducted usi Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (JVLA) of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)1 in the B configuration.
By using the broadband JVLA K- and Ka-band receivers, we observed a total of five metastable inversion transitions of NH3: (J,K) = (6, 6), (7, 7), (9, 9), (10, 10), and (13, 13) at the 1cm band with frequencies ranging from ~25GHz for the (6, 6) line to ~33GHz for the (13, 13) line. Transitions were observed in pairs of independently tunable basebands during 6h tracks (two targets per track: W51 - this paper; NGC 7538 IRS1 - Paper I, Goddi et al., 2015A&A...573A.108G) on three different dates in 2012: the (6, 6) and (7, 7) lines on May 31 at K-band, the (9, 9) and (13, 13) lines on June 21, and the (10, 10) transition on August 7, both at Ka-band. Each baseband had eight sub-bands with a 4MHz bandwidth (~40km/s at 30GHz), providing a total coverage of 32MHz (~320km/s at 30GHz). Each sub-band consisted of 128 channels with a separation of 31.25kHz (~0.3km/s at 30GHz). The typical on-source integration time was about 80min. Each transition was observed with fast switching, where 80s scans on target were alternated with 40s scans on the nearby (1.2° on the sky) QSO J1924+1540 (measured flux density 0.6-0.7Jy, depending on frequency). We derived absolute flux calibration from observations of 3C 48 (Sν=0.5-0.7Jy, depending on frequency), and bandpass calibration from observations of 3C 84 (Sν=27-29Jy, depending on frequency).
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