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A.J. Young (MIT), A.S. Wilson (UMd), S.J. Tingay (Swinburne University of Technology, Australia), S. Heinz (MIT)
We report Chandra X-ray Observatory and 1.4 GHz Australian Long Baseline Array (LBA) observations of the radio galaxy PKS 2153--69 and its environment. The Chandra image reveals a roughly spherical halo of hot gas extending out to 30 kpc around PKS 2153--69 with two depressions in the X-ray surface brightness corresponding to the radio lobes. Interpreting these depressions as radio plasma filled cavities we infer a jet power of 4 \times 1042 erg s-1. Both radio lobe hot spots are detected by Chandra, and the southern hot spot is detected at 1.4 GHz in the LBA observation, providing the highest spatial resolution map of a radio lobe hot spot to date. The hot spot spectra are consistent with a simple synchrotron emission model. The nucleus has an X-ray spectrum typical of a Type 1 AGN, and the LBA observation shows a one-sided nuclear jet on 0.1\prime\prime scales. Approximately 10\prime\prime northeast of the nucleus X-ray emission is associated with an extra-nuclear cloud that is the site of a jet/cloud interaction. The X-ray emission from the cloud can be divided into two regions; an unresolved western component associated with a knot of radio emission (seen in low resolution maps but not detected at 1.4 GHz), and a spatially resolved eastern component aligned with the pc-scale jet and associated with highly ionized optical line emitting clouds. The X-ray spectrum of the eastern component is predominantly thermal. We discuss jet precession and jet deflection models to account for the steadily increasing position angle from the northern hot spot to the western component of the jet/cloud interaction region to the direction of the pc-scale jet.
This work was supported by NASA through contract NAS8-01129, Chandra Postdoctoral Fellowship Award PF3-40026 and a grant from the Research and Development Grants Scheme of the Swinburne University of Technology.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 #3
© 2004. The American Astronomical Soceity.