The VSOP 5 GHz AGN Survey: III. Imaging Results for the First 102 Sources

Abstract

The VSOP mission is a Japanese-led project to study radio sources with sub-milliarcsec resolution using an orbiting 8 m telescope, HALCA, along with global arrays of Earth-based telescopes. Approximately 25% of the observing time is devoted to a survey of compact AGN which are stronger than 1 Jy at 5 GHz-the VSOP AGN Survey. This paper, the third in the series, presents the results from the analysis of the first 102 Survey sources. We present high resolution images and plots of visibility amplitude versus projected baseline length. In addition, model-fit parameters to the primary radio components are listed, and from these the angular size and brightness temperature for the radio cores are calculated. For those sources for which we were able to determine the source frame core brightness temperature, a significant fraction (53 out of 98) have a source frame core brightness temperature in excess of 10^12 K. The maximum source frame core brightness temperature we observed was 1.2 X 10^13 K. Explaining a brightness temperature this high requires an extreme amount of relativistic Doppler beaming. Since the maximum brightness temperature one is able to determine using only ground-based arrays is of the order of 10^12 K, our results confirm the necessity of using space VLBI to explore the extremely high brightness temperature regime.

arXiv comment33 Pages, 4 Figures (included separately as jpg files). Figure 2 separated into 26 files, figure 3 separated into 2 files. Accepted by Ap. J. Supp. in May 2004

References in corpus (8)

• Sub-milliarcsecond Imaging of Quasars and AGN
• The Parkes Half-Jansky Flat-Spectrum Sample
• Sub-Milliarcsecond Imaging of Quasars and Active Galactic Nuclei. II. Additional Sources
• The VSOP 5-GHz AGN Survey: IV. The Angular Size/Brightness Temperature Distribution
• Measuring the brightness temperature distribution of extragalactic radio sources with space VLBI
• Dual-Frequency VSOP Observations of AO 0235+164
• The Pearson-Readhead Survey of Compact Extragalactic Radio Sources From Space. I. The Images
• High Resolution VSOP Imaging of a Southern Blazar PKS 1921-293 at 1.6 GHz

Cited by in corpus (25)

• Sub-milliarcsecond Imaging of Quasars and Active Galactic Nuclei. IV. Fine Scale Structure
• TANAMI: Tracking Active Galactic Nuclei with Austral Milliarcsecond Interferometry I. First-Epoch 8.4 GHz Images
• The Australia Telescope 20 GHz (AT20G) Survey: The Bright Source Sample
• The VSOP 5-GHz AGN Survey: IV. The Angular Size/Brightness Temperature Distribution
• The VSOP 5 GHz Active Galactic Nucleus Survey: V. Imaging Results for the Remaining 140 sources
• An X-ray Imaging Survey of Quasar Jets -- Testing the Inverse Compton Model
• The orientation dependence of quasar single-epoch black hole mass scaling relationships
• Using Radio Bubbles to Constrain the Matter Content of AGN Jets
• A possible jet precession in the periodic quasar B0605-085
• Characterisation of the Mopra Radio Telescope at 16--50 GHz
• Dual frequency VSOP imaging of the jet in S5 0836+710
• Compact Bright Radio-loud AGNs -- III. A Large VLBA Survey at 43 GHz
• Resolving the Geometry of the Innermost Relativistic Jets in Active Galactic Nuclei
• A Multi-Epoch VLBI Survey of the Kinematics of CJF Sources; Part I: Model-Fit Parameters and Maps
• Broadband radio circular polarization spectrum of the relativistic jet in PKS B2126-158
• Space-VLBI Polarimetry of the BL Lac Object S5 0716+714: Rapid Polarization Variability in the VLBI core
• European VLBI Network observations of fourteen GHz-Peaked-Spectrum radio sources at 5 GHz
• Blazar 3C 454.3 in Outburst and Quiescence During 2005-2007: Two Variable Synchrotron Emission Peaks
• A kinematic study of the compact jet in quasar B3 1633+382
• Bound on the Photon Charge from the Phase Coherence of Extragalactic Radiation
• Deep Extragalactic VLBI-Optical Survey (DEVOS): I. Pilot MERLIN and VLBI observations
• Astrophysical Bounds on the Photon Charge and Magnetic Moment
• Intrinsic Brightness Temperatures of Compact Radio Jets as a Function of Frequency
• The most compact bright radio-loud AGN -- I. A new target sample selected for the space VLBI
• The importance of jet bending in gamma-ray AGN - revisited