J/other/Sci/338.355 1.3mm VLBI detections of M87 (Doeleman+, 2012)
Jet-launching structure resolved near the supermassive black hole in M87.
Doeleman S.S., Fish V.L., Schenck D.E., Beaudoin C., Blundell R.,
Bower G.C., Broderick A.E., Chamberlin R., Freund R., Friberg P.,
Gurwell M.A., Ho P.T.P., Honma M., Inoue M., Krichbaum T.P., Lamb J.,
Loeb A., Lonsdale C., Marrone D.P., Moran J.M., Oyama T., Plambeck R.,
Peimiani R.A., Rogers A.E.E., Smythe D.L., Soohoo J., Strittmatter P.,
Tilanus R.P.J., Titus M., Weintroub J., Wright M., Young K.H., Ziurys L.M.
<Science, 338, 355-358 (2012)>
=2012Sci...338..355D 2012Sci...338..355D
ADC_Keywords: Galaxies, nearby ; VLBI
Abstract:
Approximately 10% of active galactic nuclei exhibit relativistic jets,
which are powered by the accretion of matter onto supermassive black
holes. Although the measured width profiles of such jets on large
scales agree with theories of magnetic collimation, the predicted
structure on accretion disk scales at the jet launch point has not
been detected. We report radio interferometry observations, at a
wavelength of 1.3 millimeters, of the elliptical galaxy M87 that
spatially resolve the base of the jet in this source. The derived size
of 5.5±0.4 Schwarzschild radii is significantly smaller than the
innermost edge of a retrograde accretion disk, suggesting that the M87
jet is powered by an accretion disk in a prograde orbit around a
spinning black hole.
Description:
We observed M87 over 3 consecutive days with a 1.3-mm wavelength VLBI
array consisting of four telescopes at three geographical locations:
the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, the
Arizona Radio Observatory's Submillimeter Telescope (SMT) in Arizona,
and two telescopes of the Combined Array for Research in
Millimeter-wave Astronomy (CARMA, located ∼60m apart) in California.
File Summary:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ReadMe 80 . This file
tables2.dat 44 104 1.3mm VLBI detections of M87 in April 2009
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
See also:
J/AJ/133/2357 : Relativistic jets in the RRFID database (Piner+, 2007)
Byte-by-byte Description of file: tables2.dat
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1- 2 I2 d Day Day of year 2009
4- 8 A5 "h:m" Time UT star time
10- 11 A2 --- Base Baseline
13- 16 A4 --- Band Observed band ("high" or "low")
18- 25 I8 --- u u projection of the baseline length (1)
27- 34 I8 --- v v projection of the baseline length (1)
36- 39 F4.2 Jy Flux Flux density at 1.3mm
41- 44 F4.2 Jy e_Flux rms uncertainty on Flux (2)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note (1): The projections of the baseline length east and north in the
direction of M87 as measured in units of thousands of wavelengths
(kλ)
Note (2): The error on the detected flux density includes a 5% systematic
component added in quadrature to the random error.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
History:
From electronic version of the journal
(End) Patricia Vannier [CDS] 27-Dec-2012