Renewed activity in the Black hole binary V404 Cyg has been reported in December 2015 (e.g. ATels #8453, #8454, #8455, #8457, #8458, #8459, #8462), following on from a giant outburst seen early in the year. Radio monitoring of the source suggested renewed jet activity (Atel #8454) with a short radio flare appearing to reach over 70 mJy with RATAN-600 around MJD 57387.4 (2015-Dec-31; Atel #8482). Sub-mm emission also showed new activity and was detected at a level of ~41 mJy (at 350 GHz) on 2015-Jan-01 (Atel #8499). Furthermore, around these observations, it was reported that a possible hard to soft transition might be occurring (Atel #8500). To investigate the presence of resolved ejecta, we triggered high-resolution radio observations using the e-MERLIN telescope.

Radio observations of V404 Cyg were taken with e-MERLIN on 2016-Jan-05 between 06:30-22:00 UTC at a central frequency of 5.07 GHz and bandwidth of 444 MHz. A compact point-like source was detected with a peak flux density of 0.95 +/- 0.05 mJy/bm; this is a factor of ~2 above the long-term quiescent radio level of V404, which is ~0.4 mJy (Gallo, Fender & Hynes 2005). The synthesised beam had a minimum FWHM of 48 by 35 mas, suggesting most (or all) of the radio flux was constrained to within ~50 mas or ~100 AU (at a distance of 2.4 kpc).

We thank the eMERLIN staff for their rapid response to the event and to observatory’s director for approval of the project. eMERLIN is an STFC facility that has been built and operated by the University of Manchester.

We also thank the ERC for supporting this project through the 4 PI SKY grant.