Shell Masers

Abstract

We present the analytical solution of a maser shaped like a spherical shell. We determine the general condition on the size of the central cavity at which a sphere becomes a shell maser, and derive the intensity, beaming angle and observed size of both unsaturated and saturated shells.

8 pages Latex file. Paper is unchanged. The name of the style file was corrected from L-AA to l-aa to enable generation of the PS file. A postscript file of the paper printed in journal format including figure can be obtained by anonymous ftp to asta.pa.uky.edu (cd moshe), accessible also from WWW via http://www.pa.uky.edu/ . To be published in Astronomy and Astrophysics