Near-infrared imaging of RAFGL7009S^*

¹ Observatoire de Marseille, 2 place Le Verrier, 13248 Marseille Cedex 4, France
² Observatoire du Mont Mégantic et Département de Physique, Université de Montréal, CP 6128, Succ. Centre-ville, Montréal, QC, Canada H3C 3J7 e-mail: nadeaud@ere.umontreal.ca

Corresponding author: A. Zavagno, zavagno@observatoire.cnrs-mrs.fr

Received: 13 March 2002
Accepted: 29 July 2002

Abstract

RAFGL7009S is a deeply embedded massive young stellar objet (YSO) showing strong ice and saturated silicate absorption features in the mid infrared. It is associated with the ultracompact H ii region G25.65+1.05, which may be excited by a B1V star. We have obtained JHK images of a field centred on this YSO. In K we detect a non-resolved object coinciding with the radio continuum emission peak. Considering the high extinction towards this source ( 100 mag), the observed K emission is more than 7 mag in excess of that expected for a B1V star. We suggest that this emission is mainly due to scattering of the central zone emission, as recently found for a sample of embedded massive YSOs associated with 3.1 μm H₂O ice absorption (Ishii et al. [CITE]). We estimate the YSO's age to be 210⁴ years. The outflow, the methanol maser emission and the strong ice absorption features suggest the presence of a dense medium very close to the star, possibly a disk.