Gas physical conditions near HW2. Bottom left: spatial extent of the NH₃ (5, 5) bulk emission (black contours, same as Fig. 1) as compared to the dust emission (red contours) mapped in continuum at 1.37 mm by Beuther et al. (2018). Red contours start from a threshold of 27 mJy beam⁻¹ increasing by a factor 2. The equatorial reference frame is rotated clockwise by 44° to align the (projected) outflow direction with the vertical axis of the plot (linear scale to the bottom). Large grey spots mark the loci where side spectra were integrated. Side panels: spectra of the local NH₃ (5, 5) emission (grey histograms) extracted at the position of the peaks of emission and absorption. In each panel, the blue profile draws the best fit spectrum to the NH₃ emission with fitted parameters of excitation temperature (T) and column density (N) written in the corners. The systemic velocity (V_sys) of circumstellar gas is marked with a red, vertical, dotted line and the 3D molecular structure is sketched.