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Session 50 - Active Galaxies.
Display session, Tuesday, January 16
North Banquet Hall, Convention Center
We present HST Faint Object Camera / COSTAR observations of the M87 jet at 0.03" (2 pc) resolution, which is the highest resolution yet attained on the kpc-scale jet. These images reveal a wealth of new structural details. The inner few arcseconds show numerous unresolved emission knots. The outer jet regions (knots A and C) show new linear features; some of these are likely to be shocks seen in projection, while others are unresolved and may be magnetic filaments. Comparison of images taken 1 year apart reveals superluminal motion both within the nucleus and along the first few arcseconds of the jet; speeds range from \sim 2c to \sim 3.5c. Several features vanish between these epochs, suggesting that emission regions can evolve much more rapidly than the classical synchrotron lifetimes.
