Although episodic accretion has been known among low-mass YSOs for quite some time, only in recent years have the first accretion bursts in MYSOs been unambiguously identified. Their discovery, frequently heralded by methanol maser flares, confirmed the paradigm of disk-mediated accretion also in massive star formation. Due to their large luminosity, a variety of features emerge from those bursts, which distinguishes them from their low-mass counterparts. The few events observed so far display a wide range of properties (in terms of length and strength of the burst), which might be related to the mass and evolutionary stage of the objects. The poster presents an overview of the observed phenomena and provides a brief description of each. They illustrate that MYSO bursts have a serious impact on the circumstellar environment and may leave a permanent imprint. The importance of mid- and far-IR observations for the verification of the burst and the derivation of its properties is emphasized. For the first time, time-dependent dust-continuum radiative transfer was applied to model the burst-induced SED changes. Although mid-IR observations can be carried out with JWST, the loss of access to the far-IR regime caused by the SOFIA shutdown implied a serious setback for this research.
[Poster PDF File]