Young stars and scattered light in the powerful radio galaxy 3C 321

Details Young stars and scattered light in the powerful radio galaxy 3C 321 Young stars and scattered light in the powerful radio galaxy 3C 321

Jul 1996

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1996mnras.281..591t&link_type=abstract

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 281, Issue 2, pp. 591-603.

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

38

Polarization, Galaxies: Active, Galaxies: Individual: 3C 321, Galaxies: Photometry, Quasars: General, Galaxies: Starburst

Scientific paper

Blue spectropolarimetry observations are presented for the low-redshift radio galaxy 3C 321 (z=0.096). The percentage polarization is found to show a spectacular decline from the UV to the optical - by a factor of 5 from the shortest to the longest wavelengths covered by the observations - and the polarization angle is within 15 deg of the perpendicular to the radio axis. These results are consistent with the presence of a scattered AGN component which comprises 20-70 per cent of the UV continuum, but is diluted by the light of the old stellar populations at optical wavelengths. Attempts to model the continuum spectral energy distribution in terms of quasar+E-galaxy or power-law+E-galaxy produce generally good fits over much of the spectrum, but there is a significant excess over the models in the rest-wavelength range 3900-4300 A. This excess, and the detection of the higher order Balmer lines in absorption, provides strong evidence for the presence of a population of young (A-type) stars. The best-fitting model comprises a combination of a quasar, a 1-Gyr starburst, a 15-Gyr-old stellar population and nebular continuum, with these components contributing 22, 34, 34 and 10 per cent of the total flux at 3639A respectively. Overall, our results serve to emphasize the multicomponent nature of the optical/UV continuum of powerful radio galaxies.

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