M17 MIR: A massive protostar with multiple accretion Outbursts

We report the discovery of a massive protostar M17 MIR embedded in a hot molecular core in M17. The multi-wavelength data of M17 MIR during 1993 to 2019 show significant mid-IR (MIR) variations, which can be split into three stages, the decreasing phase during 1993.03 to mid 2004, the quiescent phase during mid 2004 to mid 2010, and the re-brightening phase since mid 2010 untill now. The H2O maser emission variation toward M17 MIR, together with the MIR variation, indicate an enhanced disk accretion rate onto M17 MIR during the decreasing and re-brightening phase. According to the kinematics of H2O maser spots, accretion rate ~7x10^-4 Msun/yr is estimated in the initial stage of the re-brightening phase, and a higher rate ~2x10^-3 Msun/yr is obtained in later stage, given by the MIR flux increased by a factor of 3. Radiative transfer modeling of SEDs of M17~MIR in the 2005 (quiescent) and 2017 epoch (accretion outburst) constrains the basic stellar parameters of M17 MIR, which is an intermediate-mass protostar (M~5.4 Msun) with lower accretion rate ~1.1x10^-5 Msun in quiescent and two orders of magnitude higher rate ~1.7x10^-3 Msun/yr in outburst. The enhanced accretion rate during outburst induces the luminosity outburst $\Delta L\approx7600 $Lsun, and a larger stellar radius is required to produce accretion rate consistent with observations. The decreasing and re-brightening phase reflect two accretion bursts ($\Delta t\sim 9-20$ yr) with burst magnitudes of 2 mag, separated by a quiescent phase lasting $\sim6$ yr. The fraction time in accretion ourbusrt is about 83\% over 26 yr. M17 MIR is the youngest one among the six confirmed sources with accretion burst. The extreme youth of M17 MIR suggests that minor accretion bursts are frequent at the earliest stages of massive star formation.