by Tobend

This triple has very asymmetric brightness. Is this just due to the angle we are viewing it at or is something more interesting going on?

Posted March 11, 2014 6:23 PM

by WizardHowl

This can happen as a result of viewing angle (and resulting Doppler beaming) but it can also partly reflect the amount of detail in the lobes - the FIRST survey was tuned to pick up fine details and can sometimes completely miss lobes and plumes that have no structure on small angular scales. The NVSS survey used the same radio telescope set up to look at emission on larger angular scales and can therefore see these features but that survey has a lower angular resolution as a result. I suspect additional observations will be the only way to settle individual cases.

Posted March 11, 2014 7:10 PM