New look at old friends: EVN imaging of prominent radio-loud active galactic nuclei with extremely large radio-optical positional offsets

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Frey, S., Titov, O., Melnikov, A., Lambert, S.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Frey, S.
Titov, O.
Melnikov, A.
Lambert, S.
author_facet Frey, S.
Titov, O.
Melnikov, A.
Lambert, S.
contents When comparing modern fundamental reference frames in the radio (International Celestial Reference Frame) and optical (Gaia), a couple of bright radio reference sources appear to have very large radio-optical offsets, from tens up to hundreds of milliarcseconds (mas). The amount of these positional misalignments exceeds the uncertainty of each individual technique by at least an order of magnitude. In most cases, complex and extended radio structure and its time variability, and thus the difficulty in pinpointing the true location of the central engine, is responsible for the large apparent offsets. Sometimes distant parts of the radio structure are not properly detected due to a lack of shorter interferometer baselines. For our 5-GHz very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) experiment using antennas of the European VLBI Network and the enhanced Multi Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network, we selected 10 bright radio-loud active galactic nuclei with extremely large radio-optical offsets. Sensitive imaging involving a wide range of projected baseline lengths, as well as phase-referencing to nearby sources shed light on the possible causes of positional inconsistencies. Here we show results for 3 selected sources from this project.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_06513
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle New look at old friends: EVN imaging of prominent radio-loud active galactic nuclei with extremely large radio-optical positional offsets
Frey, S.
Titov, O.
Melnikov, A.
Lambert, S.
Astrophysics of Galaxies
When comparing modern fundamental reference frames in the radio (International Celestial Reference Frame) and optical (Gaia), a couple of bright radio reference sources appear to have very large radio-optical offsets, from tens up to hundreds of milliarcseconds (mas). The amount of these positional misalignments exceeds the uncertainty of each individual technique by at least an order of magnitude. In most cases, complex and extended radio structure and its time variability, and thus the difficulty in pinpointing the true location of the central engine, is responsible for the large apparent offsets. Sometimes distant parts of the radio structure are not properly detected due to a lack of shorter interferometer baselines. For our 5-GHz very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) experiment using antennas of the European VLBI Network and the enhanced Multi Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network, we selected 10 bright radio-loud active galactic nuclei with extremely large radio-optical offsets. Sensitive imaging involving a wide range of projected baseline lengths, as well as phase-referencing to nearby sources shed light on the possible causes of positional inconsistencies. Here we show results for 3 selected sources from this project.
title New look at old friends: EVN imaging of prominent radio-loud active galactic nuclei with extremely large radio-optical positional offsets
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.06513