Astronomy Astrophysics First SIMBA observations towards CH3OH masers Masers from blind surveys mark the earliest stages of massive star formation

Abstract. We report SIMBA 1.2 mm dust continuum observations of the environments of eight methanol maser sources, all discovered during spatially fully-sampled, untargeted surveys of the galactic plane. We summarise our search for possible associations of the masers with IR sources (IRAS and MSX) and nd that it is not always possible to make denite associations. A preliminary characterisation of the IR sources found in the maser neighbourhood is given according to their position in the [60{25]{[25{12] colour-colour diagram