AAS 197, January 2001
Session 94. HEAD II: High Energy Constraints on Extended Structures
Special Session Oral, Wednesday, January 10, 2001, 1:30-3:00pm, Golden Ballroom

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[94.01] Chandra Studies of Extended X-rays in Radio and Seyfert Galaxies

A. S. Wilson (UMd and STScI)

I will discuss some results from a Chandra program of imaging and spectroscopy of nearby, bright radio galaxies and, if time permits, Seyfert galaxies. The Chandra image of Cygnus A reveals i) thermal emission from the intracluster gas, ii) a limb-brightened ``football shaped'' cavity in this gas, which has been evacuated by the relativistic gas produced by the jets, iii) synchrotron self-Compton emission from the four radio hot spots (see astro-ph/0009308), iv) X-ray emission from the jets which power the radio source, v) emission from an extended nuclear source. The detection of synchrotron self-Compton emission allows the magnetic field to be measured as 1.5 \times 10-4 gauss in the two brighter hot spots, a value which is close to equipartition assuming no relativistic protons. The X-ray spectrum of the western hot spot of Pictor A is difficult to reconcile with a synchrotron self-Compton model, unless a hitherto unobserved population of low energy relativistic electrons is present, while the X-ray emission from the jet may be inverse Compton emission off the microwave background. However, all inverse Compton models for the X-ray emission of Pictor A require magnetic fields well below equipartition, making synchrotron radiation a plausible alternative (see astro-ph/0008467). Our Chandra image of the Seyfert galaxy NGC 1068 shows X-ray emission extending 1.3 arc min (5.7 kpc) from the nucleus with spiral-like morphology on the larger scale. Within 6 arc sec (440 pc) of the nucleus is found a bright, elongated X-ray emitting region that is associated with the NE radio lobe and jet. The soft X-ray emission is thermal in origin and its spectrum will be discussed. This research was supported by NASA.


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