FINE-SCALE STRUCTURE OF THE QUASAR 3C 279 MEASURED WITH 1.3 mm VERY LONG BASELINE INTERFEROMETRY
Author(s)
Lu, Rusen; Fish, Vincent L.; Doeleman, Sheperd Samuel; Crew, Geoffrey B.; Cappallo, Roger J.; Titus, Michael A.; ... Show more Show less
DownloadLu-2013-Fine-scale structure.pdf (3.135Mb)
PUBLISHER_POLICY
Publisher Policy
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Terms of use
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
We report results from five day very long baseline interferometry observations of the well-known quasar 3C 279 at 1.3 mm (230 GHz) in 2011. The measured nonzero closure phases on triangles including stations in Arizona, California, and Hawaii indicate that the source structure is spatially resolved. We find an unusual inner jet direction at scales of ~1 pc extending along the northwest-southeast direction (P.A. = 127° ± 3°), as opposed to other (previously) reported measurements on scales of a few parsecs showing inner jet direction extending to the southwest. The 1.3 mm structure corresponds closely with that observed in the central region of quasi-simultaneous super-resolution Very Long Baseline Array images at 7 mm. The closure phase changed significantly on the last day when compared with the rest of observations, indicating that the inner jet structure may be variable on daily timescales. The observed new direction of the inner jet shows inconsistency with the prediction of a class of jet precession models. Our observations indicate a brightness temperature of ~8 × 10[superscript 10] K in the 1.3 mm core, much lower than that at centimeter wavelengths. Observations with better uv coverage and sensitivity in the coming years will allow the discrimination between different structure models and will provide direct images of the inner regions of the jet with 20-30 μas (5-7 light months) resolution.
Date issued
2013-06Department
Haystack ObservatoryJournal
The Astrophysical Journal
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Citation
Lu, Ru-Sen, Vincent L. Fish, Kazunori Akiyama, Sheperd S. Doeleman, Juan C. Algaba, Geoffrey C. Bower, Christiaan Brinkerink, et al. “FINE-SCALE STRUCTURE OF THE QUASAR 3C 279 MEASURED WITH 1.3 Mm VERY LONG BASELINE INTERFEROMETRY.” The Astrophysical Journal 772, no. 1 (June 28, 2013): 13. © 2013 The American Astronomical Society
Version: Final published version
ISSN
0004-637X
1538-4357