!
Welcome!
Welcome to issue 9 of the e-
MERLIN newsletter. 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. If you would like to
contribute to the e-MERLIN
newsletter, please get in touch at:
emerlin.support@jb.man.ac.uk "
The parsec-scale radio
cores of nearby
LeMMINGs galaxies
The centers of many nearby
galaxies are powered by a weakly
accreting super-massive black
hole (SMBH), known as a "low-
luminosity active galactic
nucleus" (LLAGN). Perhaps the
'gold standard' to detect an
LLAGN is a high brightness
temperature (TB#>10
7
K) compact
radio core with, occasionally,
resolved radio jets. To achieve
this goal, e-MERLIN and EVN/
VLBA are required to search for
the jets and the high brightness
temperature cores in the nuclear
regions of nearby galaxies, helped
by the gaia positions of the
optical core."
Continued on the next page…
SWEEPS: Beginning commensal
surveys with the EVN+e-MERLIN
SWEEPS (Synoptic Wide-field EVN–e-MERLIN
commensal Public Survey) is a proposed commensal
survey mode for the EVN+e-MERLIN, where single-
target PI-led observations are re-correlated at the
position of all known radio sources within 12 arcmin.
Initially, the phase centres are selected using the LOFAR
Two Metre Sky Survey (LoTSS), but additional phase
centres will be provided using the short baselines of e-
MERLIN in future. The ultimate goal of SWEEPS is to
bring provide large statistical studies of ~8000 sources
at VLBI resolutions. In the pilot project, a 5.6 mJy core-
jet object at 1.7 GHz was detected (shown below). This
object, which was present in the raw visibilities of the
observation, would have otherwise been lost from the
parent data set and is the first object to be recovered as
part of the SWEEPS pilot programme.#"
Read the full paper here (Herbé-George et al. 2025,
MNRAS Letters, 537, 1, L49)"
User Newsletter
Issue 9 24 April 2025!
First detected source from the SWEEPS project
Continued …!
By studying the detected
sources from the Legacy e-
MERLIN Multi-band Imaging of
Nearby Galaxies survey
(LeMMINGs), EVN and VLBA
observations have revealed pc-
scale radio cores on 23 sources,
all of which had not been
observed previously and nearly
doubling the VLBI radio sample
size of the LeMMINGs sample.
Tight correlations between the
radio luminosity and black hole
mass were found, with most of
the sources showing highly
compact radio structures on
VLBI scales."
Read the full paper here (Cheng
et al. 2025, ApJS, 277, 2, 56)."
Searching for Dyson Spheres with e-
MERLIN
Dyson Spheres are hypothetical advanced
megastructures built by extraterrestrial civilisations to
capture starlight for energy. The resulting waste heat
would cause the host stars to exhibit unusual infrared
excess. Recent observations using e-MERLIN and
EVN followed up on Dyson Sphere candidate G,
resolving the source structure into 3 components,
which can be interpreted as a radio-loud AGN. No
radio emission was found at the position of the Dyson
Sphere candidate. These observation underscore the
importance of high-resolution radio data in identifying
the true nature of anomalous astrophysical data. "
Read the full paper here (Ren et al. 2025, MNRAS,
538, 1, L56-L61)."
e-MERLIN Cycle 20 call for proposals
The e-MERLIN cycle 20 call for proposals has been
announced. All information can be found here. The
deadline for proposals is 13:59 UT on Thursday 22nd
May 2025 Click here to get to the the submission
portal.
The triple structure of NGC 2146
discovered with EVN
www.e-merlin.ac.uk
Continuum observations of the
periodic maser source G9.62+0.20E
Variable Methanol and OH masers have been
observed in the hyper-compact HII region
G9.62+0.20E. A number of models have been put
forward to explain the cause of the variability, making
the study of its radio continuum emissions particularly
important. e-MERLIN observations at 1.6 and 6.7 GHz
showed a detection at 2.25mJy at C band, with a
source size of 127 mas, but no detection at L band.
This suggest a radio spectrum turn-over at
frequencies less than 5 GHz, suggesting an optically
thick medium at such low frequencies."
Read the full paper here (Woode et al. 2025, MNRAS,
536, 4, 3277-3283)."
Announcements!
ALMA Cycle 12 Call for
Proposals. Deadline 24 April
2025. Click here for further
information "
EVN Call for Proposals.
Deadline 1 June 2025. Click
here for further information"
Meetings/Workshops!
European Astronomical
Society Annual Meeting 2025
Cork, Ireland, 23-27 June 2025,
Click here for more details"
RAS National Astronomical
Meeting Durham, UK, 3-7 July
2025, Click here for more
details"
JIVE-VLBI School 2025
Dwingeloo, Netherlands, 15-19
September 2025, Click here for
more details
Come see us at NAM!
e-MERLIN will be at the
National Astronomical Meeting
(NAM) 2025 in Durham. Some
of our operations team will be in
the exhibitors’ hall alongside
colleagues from the ALMA ARC
mode and UK SKAO regional
centre. Find out more here.
SED of G9.62+0.20E including the detection and
upper limit with e-MERLIN