Trigonometric parallaxes of 6.7 GHz methanol masers

<i>Aims. <i/> Emission from the 6.7 GHz methanol maser transition is very strong, is relatively stable, has small internal motions, and is observed toward numerous massive star-forming regions in the Galaxy. Our goal is to perform high-precision astrometry using this maser transition to obtain accurate distances to their host regions.<i>Methods. <i/>Eight strong masers were observed during five epochs of VLBI observations with the European VLBI Network between 2006 June, and 2008 March.<i>Results. <i/>We report trigonometric parallaxes for five star-forming regions, with accuracies as good as ~22 µas. Distances to these sources are kpc for ON 1, kpc for L 1206, kpc for L 1287, kpc for NGC 281-W, and kpc for S 255. The distances and proper motions yield the full space motions of the star-forming regions hosting the masers, and we find that these regions lag circular rotation on average by ~17 km s<sup>-1<sup/>, a value comparable to those found recently by similar studies.