PKS 1510-089: A Head-On View of a Relativistic Jet

Abstract

The gamma-ray blazar PKS 1510-089 has a highly superluminal milli-arcsecond jet at a position angle (PA) of -28 degrees and an arcsecond jet with an initial PA of 155 degrees. With a PA difference of 177 degrees between the arcsecond and milli-arcsecond jets, PKS 1510-089 is perhaps the most highly misaligned radio jet ever observed and serves as a graphic example of projection effects in a highly beamed relativistic jet. Here we present the results of observations designed to bridge the gap between the milli-arcsecond and arcsecond scales. We find that a previously detected ``counter-feature'' to the arcsecond jet is directly fed by the milli-arcsecond jet. This feature is located 0.3" from the core, corresponding to a de-projected distance of 30 kiloparsecs. The feature appears to be dominated by shocked emission and has an almost perfectly ordered magnetic field along its outside edge. We conclude that it is most likely a shocked bend, viewed end-on, where the jet crosses our line of sight to form the southern arcsecond jet. While the bend appears to be nearly 180 degrees when viewed in projection, we estimate the intrinsic bending angle to be between 12 and 24 degrees. The cause of the bend is uncertain; however, we favor a scenario where the jet is bent after it departs the galaxy, either by ram pressure due to winds in the intracluster medium or simply by the density gradient in the transition to the intergalactic medium.

8 pages, 4 figures, Accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (4)

• Multi-Epoch VLBA Observations of EGRET-Detected Quasars and BL Lac Objects: Superluminal Motion of Gamma-Ray Bright Blazars
• Parsec-Scale Blazar Monitoring: Flux and Polarization Variability
• The Pearson-Readhead Survey of Compact Extragalactic Radio Sources From Space. II. Analysis of Source Properties
• Formation of internal shock waves in bent jets

Cited by in corpus (21)

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• Very Rapid High-Amplitude Gamma-ray Variability in Luminous Blazar PKS 1510-089 Studied with Fermi-LAT
• Fermi Large Area Telescope and multi-wavelength observations of the flaring activity of PKS 1510-089 between 2008 September and 2009 June
• H.E.S.S. discovery of VHE gamma-rays from the quasar PKS 1510-089
• PKS 1510-089: a rare example of a flat spectrum radio quasar with a very high-energy emission
• An Extremely Curved Relativistic Jet in PKS 2136+141
• Observation of a sudden cessation of a very-high-energy gamma-ray flare in PKS 1510-089 with H.E.S.S. and MAGIC in May 2016
• Optical Monitoring of PKS 1510-089: A Binary Black Hole System?
• Polarization swings from curved trajectories of the emitting regions
• Multi-epoch parsec-scale observations of the blazar PKS 1510-089
• The Relativistic Jet Orientation and Host Galaxy of the Peculiar Blazar PKS 1413+135
• Multi-frequency polarization properties of ten quasars on deca-parsec scales at z > 3
• Multiwavelength flaring activity of PKS1510-089
• Detecting the Elusive Blazar Counter-Jets
• A hydrodynamical model for the FERMI-LAT gamma-ray light curve of Blazar PKS1510-089
• Doppler Boosting May Have Played No Significant Role in the Finding Surveys of Radio-Loud Quasars
• A Single Zone Synchrotron Model for Flares of PKS 1510-089
• The impact of thermal gas in AGN jets on the low-frequency emission
• Understanding Jets from Sources Straddling the Fanaroff-Riley Divide
• A high-resolution radio morphology and polarization of the kpc-scale X-ray jet of PKS 1127-145