Herschel beams of O₂ 487 GHz (44′′) superposed onto a grey scale C¹⁸O (3 − 2) map of ρ   Oph   A (Liseau et al. 2010). The  +  and  ×  symbols designate the positions of the H- and V-polarization beam centres of HIFI, respectively, with a separation of 66. The heavy circles show the positions of the sources O1, O3, and O4 (see Table 2), with the corresponding off-source reference positions shown by the displaced symbols to the east and west and identified by their observation numbers, 6032 and 6031 respectively, above the double arrows. The origin is at 16^h26^m246,  − 24°23′54′′ J(2000.0) and offsets in RA and Dec are in arcsec. At the distance of 120 pc, 40′′ corresponds to about 0.02 pc. The star symbols identify the positions of the star S 1, the young stellar object GSS 30 and the Class 0 source VLA 1623, where the contours depict red- and blueshifted CO (3 − 2) emission of its bipolar outflow. The filled squares identify the known Herbig-Haro objects H1 through 5 and the direction to the dominating B-star HD 147889, about 15′ away, is indicated by the heavy arrow.