Colloquium - EVN-(e)MERLIN Stokes-I contour maps of the 1665-MHz flaring emission towards o Ceti

© Sandra Etoka

Maser emission provides us with a powerful tool to study stars, both in their infancy and in the late stage of their evolution. It allows us to retrieve a wide range of physical properties of their circumstellar environment through mapping and variability studies of these fast and often obscured stages of stellar evolution. In particular, it is an efficient probe of the dynamics as well as the geometric and polarimetric properties of the regions where the emission emanates from. While the zoom-in power of VLBI long-baseline interferometers such as the EVN allows us to investigate compact emission arising from e.g. flaring regions, intermediary-baseline instrument such as (e)MERLIN allows us to get a more general picture of these environments. I shall present results demonstrating the complementarity of the "zoom in/ zoom out" powers of the EVN & (e)MERLIN to address different aspects in the study of these 2 crucial stages of evolution in the life of stars.