Surface brightness contours of the reconstructed image from archival VLA and EVN+MERLIN observations of 3C 186 at 8.4 GHz and 1.7 GHz, respectively. Blue curves indicate the VLA observation; we show six contours of constant surface brightness at 8.4 GHz, logarithmically spaced between 10% and 80% of the peak surface brightness (33.3 mJy beam⁻¹). Black curves in the background refer to the higher resolution EVN+MERLIN image (Spencer et al. 1991). Blue stars mark the centers of four elliptical Gaussian components, which we label A (lobe of the receding jet), B (lobe of the approaching jet), C (core), and K (knot).