  The nature of maser emission means that the apparent angular size of an
individual maser spot is determined by the amplification process as well as by
the instrinsic size of the emitting cloud. Highly sensitive MERLIN radio
interferometry images spatially and spectrally resolve water maser clouds
around evolved stars. We measured the properties of clouds around the red
supergiant S Per and the AGB stars IK Tau, RT Vir, U Her and U Ori, to test
maser beaming theory. Spherical clouds are expected to produce an inverse
relationship between maser intensity and apparent size, which would not be seen
from cylindrical or slab-like regions. We analysed the maser properties, in
order to estimate the saturation state, and investigated the variation of
observed spot size with intensity and across the spectral line profiles.
Circumstellar masers emanate from discrete clouds from about one to 20 AU in
diameter depending on the star. Most of the maser features have negative
excitation temperatures close to zero and modest optical depths, showing that
they are mainly unsaturated. Around S Per and (at most epochs) RT Vir and IK
Tau, the maser component size shrinks with increasing intensity. In contrast,
the masers around U Ori and U Her tend to increase in size, with a larger
scatter. The water masers from S Per, RT Vir and IK Tau are mainly beamed into
spots with an observed angular size much smaller than the emitting clouds and
smallest of all at the line peaks. This suggests that the masers are
amplification-bounded, emanating from approximately spherical clouds. Many of
the masers around U Her and U Ori have apparent sizes which are more similar to
the emitting clouds and have less or no dependence on intensity, suggesting
that these masers are matter-bounded. This is consistent with an origin in
flattened clouds and these two stars have shown other behaviour indicating the
presence of shocks.
