No Arabic abstract
We report the results of the spectroscopic observations carried out at the SAO RAS 6-m telescope for the optical components of nine new extended radio sources found in the NVSS catalog. The measured redshifts of the host galaxies are in the range of z=0.1-0.4. The physical sizes of radio sources were calculated within the standard cosmological model. The two most extended objects, 0003+1512 and 0422+0351 reach the sizes of 2.1 Mpc and 4.0 Mpc, respectively. This is close to the maximum size of known radio sources.
In this Letter I use the variation of the spread in rotation measure (RM) with Galactic latitude to separate the Galactic from the extragalactic contributions to RM. This is possible since the latter does not depend on Galactic latitude. As input data I use RMs from the catalogue by Taylor, Stil, and Sunstrum, supplemented with published values for the spread in RM (`sigmaRM) in specific regions on the sky. I test 4 models of the free electron column density (which I will abbreviate to `DMinf) of the Milky Way, and the best model builds up DMinf on a characteristic scale of a few kpc from the Sun. sigmaRM correlates well with DMinf. The measured sigmaRM can be modelled as a Galactic contribution, consisting of a term sigmaRM,MW that is amplified at smaller Galactic latitudes as 1/sin|b|, in a similar way to DMinf, and an extragalactic contribution, sigmaRM,EG, that is independent of latitude. This model is sensitive to the relative magnitudes of sigmaRM,MW and sigmaRM,EG, and the best fit is produced by sigmaRM,MW approx. 8 rad/m^2 and sigmaRM,EG approx. 6 rad/m^2. The 4 published values for sigmaRM as a function of latitude suggest an even larger sigmaRM,MW contribution and a smaller sigmaRM,EG. This result from the NVSS RMs and published sigmaRM shows that the Galactic contribution dominates structure in RM on scales between about 1degr -- 10degr on the sky. I work out which factors contribute to the variation of sigmaRM with Galactic latitude, and show that the sigmaRM,EG I derived is an upper limit. Furthermore, to explain the modelled sigmaRM,MW requires that structure in <B||> has a 1-sigma spread <~ 0.4 microG.
We present a comprehensive multi-frequency catalogue of radio sources behind the Large Magellanic Cloud between 0.2 and 20 GHz, gathered from a combination of new and legacy radio continuum surveys. This catalogue covers an area of $sim$144~deg$^2$ at angular resolutions from 45 arcsec to $sim$3 arcmin. We find 6434 discrete radio sources in total, of which 3789 are detected at two or more radio frequencies. We estimate the median spectral index ($alpha$; where $S_{v}sim u^alpha$) of $alpha = -0.89 $ and mean of $-0.88 pm 0.48$ for 3636 sources detected exclusively at two frequencies (0.843 and 1.384 GHz) with similar resolution (FWHM $sim$40-45 arcsec). The large frequency range of the surveys makes it an effective tool to investigate Gigahertz Peak Spectrum (GPS), Compact Steep Spectrum (CSS) and Infrared Faint Radio sources populations within our sample. We find 10 GPS candidates with peak frequencies near 5 GHz, from which we estimate their linear size. 1866 sources from our catalogue are (CSS) candidates with $alpha <-0.8$. We found six candidates for High Frequency Peaker (HFP) sources, whose radio fluxes peak above 5 GHz and no sources with unconstrained peaks and $alpha~>0.5$. We found optical counterparts for 343 of the radio continuum sources, of which 128have a redshift measurement. Finally, we investigate the population of 123 Infrared Faint Radio Sources (IFRSs) found in this study.
Various studies have laid claim to finding an alignment of the polarization vectors or radio jets of active galactic nuclei (AGN) over large distances, but these results have proven controversial and so far, there is no clear explanation for this observed alignment. To investigate this case further, we tested the hypothesis that the position angles of radio galaxies are randomly oriented in the sky by using data from the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR) Two-metre Sky Survey (LoTSS). A sample of 7,555 double-lobed radio galaxies was extracted from the list of 318,520 radio sources in the first data release of LoTSS at 150 MHz. We performed statistical tests for uniformity of the two-dimensional (2D) orientations for the complete 7,555 source sample. We also tested the orientation uniformity in three dimensions (3D) for the 4,212 source sub-sample with photometric or spectroscopic redshifts. Our sample shows a significant deviation from uniformity (p-value < $10^{-5}$) in the 2D analysis at angular scales of about four degrees, mainly caused by sources with the largest flux densities. No significant alignment was found in the 3D analysis. Although the 3D analysis has access to fewer sources and suffers from uncertainties in the photometric redshift, the lack of alignment in 3D points towards the cause of the observed effect being unknown systematics or biases that predominantly affect the brightest sources, although this has yet to be demonstrated irrefutably and should be the subject of subsequent studies.
Our current understanding of radio-loud AGN comes predominantly from studies at frequencies of 5 GHz and below. With the recent completion of the Australia Telescope 20 GHz (AT20G) survey, we can now gain insight into the high-frequency radio properties of AGN. This paper presents supplementary information on the AT20G sources in the form of optical counterparts and redshifts. Optical counterparts were identified using the SuperCOSMOS database and redshifts were found from either the 6dF Galaxy survey or the literature. We also report 144 new redshifts. For AT20G sources outside the Galactic plane, 78.5% have optical identifications and 30.9% have redshift information. The optical identification rate also increases with increasing flux density. Targets which had optical spectra available were examined to obtain a spectral classification. There appear to be two distinct AT20G populations; the high luminosity quasars that are generally associated with point-source optical counterparts and exhibit strong emission lines in the optical spectrum, and the lower luminosity radio galaxies that are generally associated with passive galaxies in both the optical images and spectroscopic properties. It is suggested that these different populations can be associated with different accretion modes (cold-mode or hot-mode). We find that the cold-mode sources have a steeper spectral index and produce more luminous radio lobes, but generally reside in smaller host galaxies than their hot-mode counterparts. This can be attributed to the fact that they are accreting material more efficiently. Lastly, we compare the AT20G survey with the S-cubed semi-empirical (S3-SEX) models and conclude that the S3-SEX models need refining to correctly model the compact cores of AGN. The AT20G survey provides the ideal sample to do this.
We investigate the star formation properties of ~800 sources detected in one of the deepest radio surveys at 1.4 GHz. Our sample spans a wide redshift range (~0.1 - 4) and about four orders of magnitude in star formation rate (SFR). It includes both star forming galaxies (SFGs) and active galactic nuclei (AGNs), further divided into radio-quiet and radio-loud objects. We compare the SFR derived from the far infrared luminosity, as traced by Herschel, with the SFR computed from their radio emission. We find that the radio power is a good SFR tracer not only for pure SFGs but also in the host galaxies of RQ AGNs, with no significant deviation with redshift or specific SFR. Moreover, we quantify the contribution of the starburst activity in the SFGs population and the occurrence of AGNs in sources with different level of star formation. Finally we discuss the possibility of using deep radio survey as a tool to study the cosmic star formation history.