A VLBA Study of Core Wander and Relative Proper Motion of M87 and M84

Details A VLBA Study of Core Wander and Relative Proper Motion of M87 and M84 A VLBA Study of Core Wander and Relative Proper Motion of M87 and M84

Jan 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21342009d&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #213, #420.09; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.237

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M87, the dominant galaxy in the Virgo Cluster, has a supermassive black hole of 3x10^9 solar masses that emits a jet detectable from radio to X-ray wavelengths. At a distance of only 16.7 Mpc, M87 has the largest angular-size black hole with a bright jet. The Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) has a resolution at 43 GHz of 200 microarcseconds, corresponding to about 60 Schwarzschild radii (Rs) for M87. Between January 2007 and April 2008, M87 was observed 34 times with the VLBA to study the dynamics in the jet's launch and collimation regions. Throughout that study, the relative positions of M87 and M84, another Virgo elliptical about 1.5 degrees away, were measured using phase-referencing. Those results are reported here. The RMS scatters of the relative position measurements are 11 and 34 microarcseconds (3 and 10 Rs) in the directions of the VLBA's highest and lowest resolutions. This places limits on the short-term wander of the M87 core, including during a significant radio flare seen in the 2008 data. These relative positions have also been compared with one determined from archival 2001 data. The change over 6.5 years is well outside the scatter of the 2007-2008 measurements and implies a transverse velocity of about 800 km/s, consistent with the cluster's radial velocity dispersion. But further studies of possible long-term systematic errors are required to determine the significance of this result. A measurement of the relative transverse motion of two Virgo Cluster galaxies would be a step toward determining the 3D motions needed for accurate modeling of cluster evolution. The NRAO is a facility of the NSF operated under cooperative agreement by AUI. F. Davies acknowledges support from the NSF REU program.

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