The e-MERLIN Legacy programme
Morphology and Time Evolution of Thermal Jets
Associated with Low Mass Young Stars
Luis F. Rodriguez (The Centro de Radioastronomia y Astrofisica of UNAM in Mexico)
Frank Shu (University of California at San Diego, USA), Susana Lizano (The Centro de Radioastronomia y Astrofisica of UNAM, Mexico), Luis F. Rodriguez (The Centro de Radioastronomia y Astrofisica of UNAM, Mexico), Melvin Hoare (University of Leeds, UK), John Richer (University of Cambridge, UK), Tom Ray (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, Ireland), Jochen Eislöffel (The Thüringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Germany) Jeremy Lim (Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics of the Academia Sinica, Taiwan), Paul Ho (Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics of the Academia Sinica, Taiwan), Hsien Shang (Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics of the Academia Sinica, Taiwan), Mike Cai (Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics of the Academia Sinica, Taiwan)
Abstract
We plan to take advantage of the unprecedented combination of sensitivity (1 μJy) and angular resolution (50 mas) of e-MERLIN at 5-7 GHz to image the free-free emission from a list of selected jets associated with low-mass protostars. The main goal of these observations will be to obtain unique information on their structure to test specific morphological predictions of jet models and to compare with matching-beam 43 GHz observations (50 mas) made with the EVLA that are expected to trace the dust from the disk. This will be the first time that the comparison between the dust and free-free emissions will be feasible at these high angular resolutions, leading to an improved understanding of the jet-disk relation and of the physics that characterizes low-mass star formation.
