Publication Date:
2011-08-19
Description:
The luminous radio galaxy Cyg A was observed with a five-station US VLBI array at 5 GHz at epoch 1983.25. The jet can be followed from the core to a distance of 9 milliarcsec (mas). Within the limited dynamic range of these observations, it is one-sided (jet:counterjet ratio greater than 12:1). If this one-sidedness is due to Doppler boosting, then (1) the jet must decelerate to a mildly relativistic velocity on a kiloparsec scale, (2) the source cannot lie with 30 deg of the plane of the sky. The jet points directly at the base of the kpc-scale jet seen by Perley, Dreher, and Cowan (1984); the curvature occurs primarily or entirely on a scale of 10-100 kpc. The jet brightness falls off more slowly inside 1 kpc than in other powerful sources. A search for compact structure in the three bright hot spots revealed no structure lower than 3 mas in size with flux greater than 6 mJy.
Keywords:
ASTROPHYSICS
Type:
Astrophysical Journal, Part 1 (ISSN 0004-637X); 295; 463-465
Format:
text
