The giant lobes of Centaurus A observed at 118 MHz with the Murchison Widefield Array
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Author(s)
Cappallo, Roger J.
Corey, Brian E.
Goeke, Robert F.
Hewitt, Jacqueline N.
Kincaid, Barton B.
Kratzenberg, Eric W.
Lonsdale, Colin John
McWhirter, Stephen R.
Morgan, Edward H.
Remillard, Ronald Alan
Date Issued
September 2013
Journal
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Citation
McKinley, B., F. Briggs, B. M. Gaensler, I. J. Feain, G. Bernardi, R. B. Wayth, M. Johnston-Hollitt, et al. “The Giant Lobes of Centaurus A Observed at 118 MHz with the Murchison Widefield Array.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 436, no. 2 (December 1, 2013): 1286–1301.
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Author's final manuscript
Abstract
We present new wide-field observations of Centaurus A (Cen A) and the surrounding region at 118 MHz with the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) 32-tile prototype, with which we investigate the spectral-index distribution of Cen A's giant radio lobes. We compare our images to 1.4 GHz maps of Cen A and compute spectral indices using temperature–temperature plots and spectral tomography. We find that the morphologies at 118 MHz and 1.4 GHz match very closely apart from an extra peak in the southern lobe at 118 MHz, which provides tentative evidence for the existence of a southern counterpart to the northern middle lobe of Cen A. Our spatially averaged spectral indices for both the northern and southern lobes are consistent with previous analyses, however we find significant spatial variation of the spectra across the extent of each lobe. Both the spectral-index distribution and the morphology at low radio frequencies support a scenario of multiple outbursts of activity from the central engine. Our results are consistent with inverse-Compton modelling of radio and gamma-ray data that support a value for the lobe age of between 10 and 80 Myr.
MIT Department
Haystack Observatory
MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stt1662
