Welcome!

Welcome to the new e-MERLIN

newsletter. Every quarter we will

be publishing e-MERLIN-related

news and science highlights,

including calls for proposals,

adverts for summer schools and

links to e-MERLIN partners like

the EVN and ORP. If you would

like to contribute to the e-MERLIN

newsletter, please get in touch at:

emerlin.support@jb.man.ac.uk "

If you have any suggestions for

additions or topics, please don’t

hesitate to get in touch too!"

Detecting the BOAT

with e-MERLIN

On 9th October 2022, the

brightest gamma ray burst of all

time (i.e. the “BOAT”) was

detected with the Neil Gehrels

Swift Observatory. At a redshift of

z~0.15, it is one of the nearest

GRBs ever recorded and was so

bright that it caused disturbances

in the Earth’s ionosphere. e-

MERLIN joined in as part of rapid

response time (RRT) observations,

detecting the source and

providing precise co-ordinates for

EVN observations to follow up.

This work is published as a GCN

here (Rhodes et al., 2022,

GCN.32700).

STFC and RADIOBLOCKS funding

streams announced

e-MERLIN is funded by UKRI-STFC and the e-MERLIN

team submitted a substantial proposal to STFC's

Projects Peer Review Panel (PPRP) last year requesting

operational funding for the period 2023-28 as well as a

'technical refresh' to replace much of the digital

equipment from the telescopes and data links to the

correlator. We are pleased to report that the PPRP

review was very positive about current and future

science with e-MERLIN and fully supported the

continuation of operations and the technical upgrade,

which also includes the start of a programme to develop

a new 8-16 GHz receiver band. STFC have now

awarded funding for the 2023-28 period and we have

started the initial design work on the key digital

upgrades. Future newsletter issues will provide updates

on the progress of this work."

Separate to the STFC funding above, e-MERLIN and

Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics personnel will be

playing signiﬁcant roles in the ‘RADIOBLOCKS’ Horizon

Europe project, which was recently awarded €10 million

of funding to develop new beyond-state-of-the-art

technologies and infrastructure for radio and sub-mm

telescopes for the next decades. Launching in April

2023 and lasting for four years, this project will develop

state-of-the-art receivers and correlators for radio

telescopes, as well as new data processing and imaging

methods. Prof Rob Beswick, the project lead at The

University of Manchester commented, “The project

brings together leading academic research and industry

experts from across the world to co-develop new

technologies”. A full description of the RADIOBLOCKS

project can be found here."

User Newsletter

Issue 1 24 January 2023!

A PRECISE

measurement of a

repeating FRB

The study of repeating fast radio

bursts (FRBs) has increased

exponentially in recent years

with the discovery that some

FRBs show repeat bursts.

Recently the FRB source FRB

20220912A was found to be a

very active repeater and as part

of the PRECISE project, e-

MERLIN joined other EVN

stations to observe the source

and localise the emission on

milliarcsecond scales. These

data are now being correlated

and analysis is still ongoing, but

over 150 bursts found in the

Eﬀelsberg data were already

published as an ATel here

(Kirsten et al., 2022, ATel

15727). "

Resolving the Serpens radio jet

Young Stellar Objects (YSOs) are known to produce

radio jets, though how they are collimated and

launched is not well understood. The collimation of

these jets happens on au-scales, necessitating high-

resolution radio interferometers to reveal the relative

contributions of these diﬀerent processes. "

As part of the Thermal Jets e-MERLIN legacy

programme, the Serpens radio jet was observed over

multiple epochs with e-MERLIN and the VLA. For the

ﬁrst time for an intermediate-mass protostar, motions

on scales less than 100 au were detected, owing to

the resolving power of e-MERLIN. In fact, the central

region of the Serpens jet was resolved at ~15 au

resolution into several components, enabling the

calculation of the jet velocity which was found to be

highly variable over 10 years of observations. This

variability points to episodic variations of the accretion

rate. The inferred ~100 km/s jet velocity suggests that

it was launched from the innermost regions of the

accretion disc."

Read the full paper here (Rodríguez-Kamenetzky

et al. 2022, ApJL, 931, 2, L26).

The Mark 2 telescope

peering out through the

mist one November

morning. Credit to Anthony

Holloway (twitter: @aj_h)

The variable and evolving Serpens radio jet

e-MERLIN Cycle 15

results announced

The results for cycle 15 of the e-

MERLIN call for proposals have

now been released to PIs. The

successful programmes are

listed here.

www.e-merlin.ac.uk

EVN + e-MERLIN probe the recurrent

nova RS Ophiuchi

The symbiotic binary and recurrent nova RS Ophiuchi

(RS Oph) went into outburst in August 2021, the third

such outburst in the last 40 years which e-MERLIN

and its predecessors have followed at centimetre

wavelengths. EVN + e-MERLIN observations taken 34

days post-outburst showed lobes of emission

expanding outwards into the CSM at milliarcsecond

scales. The radio emission is bi-polar as the outburst

sweeps up the red giant wind. The eastern side of this

bi-polar structure is thought to be obscured due to a

density enhancement near the binary position. Using

the new GAIA position of RS Oph, the lobes were

found to be moving with velocities of ~7500 km/s and

matches optical spectroscopic data. Analysis of

additional%observations is underway and is expected

to reveal the details of the expansion%of the ejecta. "

Read the full paper here (Munari et al. 2022, A&A

Letters, 666, L6)

RS Oph’s radio structure 34 days post-outburst

Announcements

EVN Call for Proposals.

Deadline 1 February 2023.

Click here for further information"

Eﬀelsberg Call for Proposals.

Deadline 2 February 2023.

Click here for further information"

INAF Call for Proposals

Deadline expected in April 2023.

Click here for further information"

Meetings/Workshops

ORP Proposal Writing School

On-line on 20/27 February and

6/20 March 2023. Deadline 27

January. See here for more."

IAU Symposium 378: Black

hole winds at all scales 12-16

March 2023, Haifa, Israel, Click

here for more details

Bologna VLBI: Life begins at

40! Bologna, Italy, 22-26 May

2023. Abstract submission TBC.

Click here for more details"

CASA-VLBI Workshop

Dwingeloo, Netherlands, 5-9

June 2023, Click here for more"

Get in touch

To get in touch with the e-

MERLIN support team, email:

emerlin.support@jb.man.ac.uk"