Sub‐au imaging of water vapour clouds around four asymptotic giant branch stars

We present MERLIN maps of the 22‐GHz H 2 O masers around four low‐mass late‐type stars (IK Tau, U Ori, RT Vir and U Her), made with an angular resolution of ∼15 milliarcsec and a velocity resolution of 0.1 km s −1 . The H 2 O masers are found in thick expanding shells with inner radii ∼6 to 16 au and outer radii four times larger. The expansion velocity increases radially through the H 2 O maser regions, with logarithmic velocity gradients of 0.5–0.9. IK Tau and RT Vir have well‐filled H 2 O maser shells with a spatial offset between the near and far sides of the shell, which suggests that the masers are distributed in oblate spheroids inclined to the line of sight. U Ori and U Her have elongated poorly filled shells with indications that the masers at the inner edge have been compressed by shocks; these stars also show OH maser flares. MERLIN resolves individual maser clouds, which have diameters of 2–4 au and filling factors of only ∼0.01 with respect to the whole H 2 O maser shells. The circumstellar envelope velocity structure gives additional evidence the maser clouds are density‐bounded. Masing clouds can be identified over a similar time‐scale to their sound crossing time (∼2 yr) but not longer. The sizes and observed lifetimes of these clouds are an order of magnitude smaller than for those around red supergiants, similar to the ratio of low‐mass:high‐mass stellar masses and sizes. This suggests that cloud size is determined by stellar properties, not local physical phenomena in the wind.