OH maser emission from IRAS sources

The 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. (1995ApJS...96..159M) who have identified 192 infrared objects from the IRAS Faint Source Survey possibly associated with translucent clouds at galactic latitudes |b|>=30{deg}.

These IRAS sources have far-infrared colours typical of young stellar objects and pre-main-sequence stars and thus provide a starting list for further studies about their actual nature. H_2_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 level of 0.2-0.5Jy (3{sigma}) in any of the 91 objects.