A complete survey of mm line emission from CO and 13CO in water fountain stars

"Water fountains" (WF) are post-AGB stars characterized by very fast and often bipolar jets in the water maser line at 22 GHz. We conducted a survey of the CO and (CO)-C-13 line emission using the TRAM 30m radio telescope of all the sources visible from the observatory. Over a total of 10 WFs observed, we identified CO and (CO)-C-13 associated to IRAS 18460-0151 and IRAS 18596+0315. As the CO line emission is ubiquitous in the Galactic plane, the confirmed detections have met strict criteria to consider these cases as confirmed detections. The velocity components associated to the WFs are similar to 40 km s(-1) wide, centered at the star velocity, present only at the star position, and detected in the four observed transitions, the CO and (CO)-C-13 J = 1 -> 0 and 2 -> 1 lines. A preliminary study, based on line ratios, indicates that this molecular component has a high opacity, and a very low C-12/C-13 isotopic ratio.