IMAGE SIMULATIONS OF THE KVN AND EAST ASIA VLBI FACILITIES WITH A SiO MASER MODEL IMAGE

We report results of image simulations of the KVN and VLBI experiments of the KVN with several other East Asia VLBI facilities. To investigate their imaging capability a model-generated image of 7 mm SiO maser emission in Mira variables is used. The resulting simulations show that the joint VLBI experiments of the KVN with East Asia VLBI facilities can produce reasonably good images at 7 mm spectral line experiments. However, there are no apparent differences in peak flux densities and images themselves in the simulations among different combinations of these facilities. In addition, the simulated images of observations which include bigger antennas do not show any expected improvement to the image sensitivity. The small variations in the peak flux density and similar image sensitivity, irrespective of different antenna sizes or numbers of baselines used in the simulations, turn out due to a specific characteristic of the adopted model image. Test simulations using another SiO maser image from R Cas observations prove that the participation of bigger antennas in the VLBI experiments does improve image sensitivity. We confirm the need of additional longer baselines in the experiments of the East Asia VLBI facilities to study very compact maser clumps on sub-milliarcsecond scales.