ARG0001c36 - which galaxy is the host?
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by
JeanTate
FIRST-wise, it looks like a classic hourglass-becoming-doublelobe ... but neither of the likely hosts is at the waist/middle:
The more interesting candidate host is not-boring-elliptical z_ph 0.229±0.0117/0.229±0.0357 SDSS J084640.78+364159.5:
How to explain the apparent offset?
Boilerplate: SDSS image per
http://skyservice.pha.jhu.edu/DR10/ImgCutout/getjpeg.aspx, FIRST (red) contours derived from the FITS file produced using SkyView with Python code described in this RGZ Talk thread. Image center (J2000.0) is the center of the ARG image ARG0001c36.Posted
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by
WizardHowl
in response to JeanTate's comment.
I would definitely agree with SDSS J084640.78+364159.5 as the host. The apparent offset might be due to the jets being emitted at an angle to our line-of-sight. I see this a fair amount and often mark an IR source slightly away from the waist of an hourglass as being associated with the radio emission.
This looks like an interacting pair of galaxies and both have almost identical Z_ph estimates, so it hard to say much about what types they actually are without a spectrum. Both also have g-r of about 1.4 (the SDSS magnitudes also have fairly low error bars for these bands) so I would hazard a guess that there's a lot of dust around. I'm getting used to seeing larger ETGs assimilate smaller galaxies, so I guess it's a fairly common trigger for an outburst of radio activity. I wonder how long after this the super-massive black holes would coalesce: gravity wave observatories are going to have a field day observing all the SMBH mergers once they are up and running... 😉
Posted
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by
42jkb
scientist, admin
in response to WizardHowl's comment.
I agree with this and the alignment of the jets and lobes to our line-of-sight which shows the AGN offset from the host.
As for gravity wave detection, there is a team in Australia at CSIRO working on this right now. Some of their most recent work is written up here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1404.5183
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