SEARCH FOR H2O MASER EMISSION FROM HIGH-LATITUDE IRAS SOURCES

A high-sensitivity search for water maser emission at 22.2 GHz has bee n performed on a sample of 91 IRAS point sources at high-latitudes'. T he aim of the survey is to verify if these clouds are capable of star formation as indicated by the presence of water masers. The sample is based on the recent work of Magnani et al. (1995) who have identified 192 infrared objects from the IRAS Faint Source Survey possibly associ ated with translucent clouds at galactic latitudes \b\ greater than or equal to 30 degrees. These IRAS sources have far-infrared colours typ ical of young stellar objects and pre-main-sequence stars and thus pro vide a starting list for further studies about their actual nature. H2 O maser emission is a good diagnostic of the presence of dense gas and of recent star formation. We did not find water maser emission at a l evel of 0.2-0.5 Jy (3 sigma) in any of the 91 objects. The negative re sult indicates that these high-latitude sources do not represent poten tial sites of star formation, consistent with the fact that most high- latitude molecular clouds do not appear gravitationally bound.