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Superluminal Motion in CTA 102

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2017

Ann E. Wehrle*
Affiliation:
Owens Valley Radio Observatory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA

Extract

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Sholomitskii (1965) discovered that the flux density of the quasar CTA 102 varies at low frequencies on a timescale of a few months. Low-frequency variability can be explained by “superluminal flux variation” (Romney et al. 1984): If the intrinsic brightness of a component moving in a relativistically beamed source varies by only a few percent, the observer sees its flux density change by a much larger factor δ3-α when the optically thin blob moves almost directly toward the observer. Such a relativistically beamed source is likely to exhibit superluminal motion if studied with sufficient resolution and sensitivity. Superluminal motion in CTA 102 was discovered by Bååth (1987) who concluded on the basis of maps made at three epochs at a frequency of 932 MHz that two components were separating at a rate of 0.65 milliarcseconds (mas) per year. Using a redshift z = 1.037 and H0 = 100 km s−1 Mpc−1, q0 = 0.5, this expansion speed corresponds to (18 ± 4)h−1c. The extraordinarily high speed led us to make VLBI images of the source at a higher frequency in order to increase the resolution and make a more precise determination of the speed.

Type
Part 10: Radio Galaxies, Components and Structure
Copyright
Copyright © Kluwer 1989 

References

Bååth, L. B. 1987, in Zensus, and Pearson, 1987, p. 206.Google Scholar
Romney, J. D., Alef, W., Pauliny-Toth, I. I. K., Preuss, E., and Kellermann, K. I. 1984 in IAU Symposium 110, VLBI and Compact Radio Sources ed. Fanti, R., Kellermann, K. and Setti, G. (Dordrecht:Reidel).Google Scholar
Sholomitskii, G. B. 1965 English translation in Soviet Astron. , 9, 516.Google Scholar
Zensus, J. A., Bååth, L. B., Cohen, M. H., and Nicolson, G. D. 1988, Nature, 334, 410.Google Scholar
Zensus, J. A., and Pearson, T. J., (eds.) 1987, Superluminal Radio Sources (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar