Discovery of an Optical Jet in the BL Lac Object 3C 371

Abstract

We have detected an optical jet in the BL Lac object 3C 371 that coincides with the radio jet in this object in the central few kpc. The most notable feature is a bright optical knot 3 arcsec (4 kpc) from the nucleus that occurs at the location where the jet apparently changes its direction by ~30 degrees. The radio, near-infrared and optical observations of this knot are consistent with a single power-law spectrum with a radio-optical spectral index alpha = -0.81. One possible scenario for the observed turn is that the jet is interacting with the material in the bridge connecting 3C 371 to nearby galaxies and the pressure gradient is deflecting the jet significantly.

arXiv comment11 pages, LaTeX, 4 figures (1 eps, 3 gifs), accepted for publication in ApJ Letters

References in corpus (2)

• ROSAT observations of radio-selected BL Lac objects
• An optical counterjet in 3C66B?

Cited by in corpus (13)

• The HST Survey of BL Lacertae Objects. I. Surface Brightness Profiles, Magnitudes, and Radii of Host Galaxies
• HST Observations of the Optical Jets of PKS 0521-365, 3C371, and PKS 2201+044
• Detection of an X-ray jet in 3C 371 with Chandra
• X-Ray Emission from a Radio Hotspot in 3C 390.3: Evidence for the Deflection of a Radio Jet by a Neighboring Galaxy
• Deep Chandra and multicolor HST observations of the jets of 3C 371 and PKS 2201+044
• The stellar content of low redshift BL Lac host galaxies from multicolour imaging
• Optical Polarimetry of the Jets of Nearby Radio Galaxies: I. The Data
• HST NIR Snapshot Survey of 3CR Radio Source Counterparts II: An Atlas and Inventory of the Host Galaxies, Mergers and Companions
• The Radio-Optical Jet in NGC 3862 from Parsec tu Sub-Kiloparsec Scales
• Space VLBI Observations of 3C371
• B and I-band optical micro-variability observations of the BL Lac objects S5 2007+777 and 3C371
• PKS 0537-441: extended [O II] emission and a binary QSO?
• Multifrequency Radiation of Extragalactic Large-Scale Jets