THE W3 IRS-5 CLUSTER - RADIO-CONTINUUM AND WATER MASER OBSERVATIONS

High sensitivity and angular resolution observations of the radio cont inuum toward W3 IRS 5, along with observations of strong water masers, have been made with the VLA. At least seven distinct radio continuum sources have been discovered, which are most likely a cluster of B0.5- B0 stars with ionized stellar winds. This is in contrast to previous i nterpretations of observational data, which suggested that IRS 5 is a single massive protostar with bolometric luminosity of 2 x 10(5) L.. T he spatial distribution of the water masers roughly follows that of th e radio sources; and these masers show a gradient in radial velocity s imilar to that found in a larger scale molecular outflow. We suggest t hat previously observed, multicomponent absorption in CO infrared tran sitions traces outflows from the several stellar wind sources, rather than episodic outbursts from a single source.