The Helical Jet/ISM Interaction in NGC 4258

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Hst Proposal Id #6563 Agn

Scientific paper

NGC 4258 is a nearby active spiral with famous jets visible in radio continuum, visual emission lines, and soft x-rays. It is the best galaxy for study of entrainment, confinement, and stability of jets because its jets emerge perpendicular to a pc-scale accretion disk of known orientation. The disk rotates around a compact central mass of density >4*10^9 Msubsun pc^-3. The jets flow for several arc-minutes near the disk plane, and include >10^7/n_e Msun of ionized gas in intertwined strands of diameter <=0sec point9 {<30 pc}. The strands twist helically; the twisting is also seen in Fabry- Perot spectra as velocity oscillations of +/-350 kms down the jet, suggesting that the gas flow is itself helical. The emission lines have flux ratios consistent with those of a 300 -400 kms photoionizing shock. Most of the x-rays in NGC 4258 coincide with the jets, are thermal, with kT = 0.3 keV as expected for gas behind a 400 kms shock. The shocks likely arise when molecular clumps -- stripped from cloud complexes known to be adjacent to the jet -- are entrained into the flow. A deep WFPC2 image is proposed to study the jet/ISM interaction away from the nucleus, the time history of the outflow, and correlations with the hot x-ray gas, thermal gas, and relativistic particles in the jets, on a much smaller scale {2 pc} than is possible in powerful radio galaxies. A FOS UV spectrum of a jet knot or the nucleus, along the rotation axis of the accretion disk, will assess the roles of nuclear beaming and in situ photoionization by high-velocity shocks.

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