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G.B. Taylor (NRAO), A.B. Peck (MPIfR/CfA), H. Smith (NRAO/Smith College)
A series of VLBA observations of the Compact Symmetric Object (CSO) 1946+708 indicate that the radio jets lie close (about 20 degrees) to the plane of the sky, with the northern jet being on the near side. This "edge-on" view of a bright (0.4 Jy at 8.4 GHz), compact (size less than 100 pc) radio galaxy at z=0.101 provides a rare view of an AGN. Both jets can be seen emanating from a compact and variable core component. Components in the jets, on both sides of the core, are seen to move at relativistic speeds, and can be used to test predictions of the standard model for jets, and of unified schemes for radio galaxies. If simple kinematic models can be applied, then the inclination of the source and bulk jet velocity can be directly determined for any assumed value of the Hubble constant. Conversely, the measurements may be useful in placing direct constraints on the Hubble constant. There is also evidence of a circumnuclear disk seen in both HI and free-free absorption towards the core and jets within the central few parsecs. We will present these and other results gleaned from a multi-frequency study using the VLBA including 5 epochs of VLBI monitoring at 8.4 and 15 GHz between 1995 and 2001.
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: gtaylor@nrao.edu