2000A&A...360..311S

We present an analysis of the 6.7GHz methanol maser data taken with the 32 m Torun telescope during recently completed survey of IRAS based sample of star formation sites. Methanol masers are associated with 13% of the sources in the sample. The mean detection rate slightly increases with the IRAS flux density quality measurements. It is 62% for sources with the 60µm flux density, F₆₀>10⁴Jy and decreases to 7% for sources with F₆₀<250Jy. The detection rate in the inner Galaxy region of 18% is a factor of eight higher than that in the anticentre region. The maser velocity range, ΔV<6km/s is observed in sources with the mean linewidth, <FWHM>≤0.14km/s, whereas the distribution of ΔV in sources with <FWHM≫0.14km/s is flat with only a slight excess of the source number with ΔV>10km/s. ΔV slightly increases with the [25-12] colour and ΔV>8km/s is usually not observed among the bluest sources ([25-12]<0.5). Several of the methanol sources found have colours well outside the colour ranges commonly accepted for ultracompact HII regions. The maximum detection rate of methanol masers is observed for specific colour ranges. The maser flux density is weakly correlated with the 60µm flux density and far-infrared pumping with an efficiency of about 3% is possible. The median photon luminosity of methanol masers in the solar neighbourhood is 2x10⁴³s^–1, being between the OH and H₂O maser luminosities. The inferred lower limit for the linewidth of 0.05km/s implies the kinetic temperature of less than 35K in the methanol maser regions. It is proposed that the differences in the observed maser properties primarily reflect evolutionary changes of star-forming regions.