SF-04-0040

A high-resolution radio study of the L1551 IRS 5 and L1551 NE jets

Anton Feeney-Johansson, Tom P. Ray, Simon J. D. Purser, Carlos Carrasco-Gonzalez, Adriana Rodriguez-Kamenetzky, Jochen Eisloffel, Jeremy Lim, Roberto Galvan-Madrid, Susana Lizano, Luis F. Rodriguez, Hsien Shang, Paul Ho

Using observations with e-MERLIN and the VLA, together with archival data from ALMA, we obtain high-resolution radio images of two binary YSOs: L1551 IRS 5 and L1551 NE, covering a wide range of frequencies from 5 - 336 GHz. By comparing these observations to those from a previous epoch, it is shown that there is a high degree of variability in the free-free emission from the jets of these sources. In particular, the northern component of L1551 IRS 5 shows a remarkable decline in flux density of a factor of ~5. By fitting the spectra of the sources, the ionized mass-loss rates of the jets are derived and it is shown that there is significant variability of up to a factor of ~6 on timescales of ~20 years. Using radiative transfer modelling, we also obtained a model image for the jet of the southern component of L1551 IRS 5 to help study the inner region of the jet in more detail.