We have measured the sub-milli-arcsecond structure of 274 extragalactic sources at 24 and 43 GHz in order to assess their astrometric suitability for use in a high frequency celestial reference frame (CRF). Ten sessions of observations with the Very
Long Baseline Array have been conducted over the course of $sim$5 years, with a total of 1339 images produced for the 274 sources. There are several quantities that can be used to characterize the impact of intrinsic source structure on astrometric observations including the source flux density, the flux density variability, the source structure index, the source compactness, and the compactness variability. A detailed analysis of these imaging quantities shows that (1) our selection of compact sources from 8.4 GHz catalogs yielded sources with flux densities, averaged over the sessions in which each source was observed, of about 1 Jy at both 24 and 43 GHz, (2) on average the source flux densities at 24 GHz varied by 20%-25% relative to their mean values, with variations in the session-to-session flux density scale being less than 10%, (3) sources were found to be more compact with less intrinsic structure at higher frequencies, and (4) variations of the core radio emission relative to the total flux density of the source are less than 8% on average at 24 GHz. We conclude that the reduction in the effects due to source structure gained by observing at higher frequencies will result in an improved CRF and a pool of high-quality fiducial reference points for use in spacecraft navigation over the next decade.
We present Very Long Baseline Array observations of the kinematics of the water masers associated with OH 12.8-0.9, the fourth member of the so-called water fountain class of sources. We find that the masers occupy two distinct regions at the ends of
a bipolar jet-like structure oriented north-south, with the blue-shifted masers located to the north and the red-shifted masers to the south. The masers are distributed along arc-like structures 12-20 mas across oriented perpendicular to the separation axis with an angular separation of ~110 mas on the sky. Our multi-epoch observations, show the two maser arcs to be expanding away from each other along the axis of separation. The relative proper motions of the two maser regions is 2.7 mas/yr (~105 km/s at the assumed distance of 8 kpc). The measured radial velocity difference between the northern, blue-shifted masers and the southern, red-shifted masers is 48.4 km/s. The radial velocity, when combined with the proper motion, yields a three-dimensional expansion velocity of 58 km/s and an inclination angle of 24 deg. for the jet. By combining our radial velocities with historical values, we estimate the three dimensional acceleration of the masers to be ~0.63 km/s/yr and a dynamical age for the collimated outflow of ~90 yr.
