  The results of a survey searching for outflows using near-infrared imaging is
presented. Targets were chosen from a compiled list of massive young stellar
objects (YSOs) associated with methanol masers in linear distributions.
Presently, it is a widely held belief that these methanol masers are found in
(and delineate) circumstellar accretion disks around massive stars. If this
scenario is correct, one way to test the disk hypothesis is to search for
outflows perpendicular to the methanol maser distributions. The main objective
of the survey was to obtain wide-field near-infrared images of the sites of
linearly distributed methanol masers using a narrow-band 2.12 micron filter.
This filter is centered on the H2 v=1-0 S(1) line; a shock diagnostic that has
been shown to successfully trace CO outflows from young stellar objects.
Twenty-eight sources in total were imaged of which eighteen sources display H2
emission. Of these, only TWO sources showed emission found to be dominantly
perpendicular to the methanol maser distribution. Surprisingly, the H2 emission
in these fields is not distributed randomly, but instead the majority of
sources are found to have H2 emission dominantly PARALLEL to their distribution
of methanol masers. These results seriously question the hypothesis that
methanol masers exist in circumstellar disks. The possibility that linearly
distributed methanol masers are instead directly associated with outflows is
discussed.
