VLA/VLBA Observations of a Radio Galaxy at z=3.1

The radio galaxy B3 J2330+3927 lies so far away from us (more than 11000 million light years), that when its light was emitted neither our dear Earth, nor our Sun existed; even our galaxy, the Milky Way, was not entirely formed. The central panel shows the pseudo-color VLA image obtained at 3.6 cm (white and orange colors), and the overlay of our VLBA images at 6 and 18 cm (contours). Despite the high resolution of the VLA, the enormous distance to the source prevents seing fine details of the radio source structure, so we merely see two "blobs" of radio emission. The two flanking panels are blow-ups of the insets,and correspond to VLBA images at 6 cm (grey scale) and 18 cm (contours). The huge angular resolution provided by the VLBA beautifully resolves the innermost structure of the source. In particular, these observations allowed to find out the core of the radio source, as well as image the relativistic jet that emanates from it. Note also that the jet seems to disappear from our view until it reaches the region where it impacts with the intergalactic medium. The impact is so violent as to cause the bending of the jet (lower inset).

Legacy Astronomical Images

NRAO/AUI/NSF does not hold full copyright for this image. Contact the archivist for details.

Legacy Astronomical Image

B3 J2330+3927

Miguel A. Perez-Torres, Carlos de Breuck

Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA)

2004-12-09

continuum

RA 23:30:24.910, Dec: 39:27:11.400 (J2000)

0.000389 x 0.000389 degrees

Contact the archivist for a high resolution tif of this image.

Active Galactic Nuclei Series

Radio Galaxies Unit