Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2011-03-21
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
14 pages, 3 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal
Scientific paper
Many of the compact extragalactic radio sources that are used as fiducial points to define the celestial reference frame are known to have proper motions detectable with long-term geodetic/astrometric Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) measurements. These changes can be as high as several hundred micro-arcseconds per year for certain objects. When imaged with VLBI at milli-arcsecond (mas) angular resolution, these sources (radio-loud active galactic nuclei) typically show structures dominated by a compact, often unresolved "core" and a one-sided "jet". The positional instability of compact radio sources is believed to be connected with changes in their brightness distribution structure. For the first time, we test this assumption in a statistical sense on a large sample, not only for individual objects. We investigate a sample of 62 radio sources for which reliable long-term time series of astrometric positions as well as detailed 8-GHz VLBI brightness distribution models are available. We compare the characteristic direction of their extended jet structure and the direction of their apparent proper motion. We present our data and analysis method, and conclude that there is indeed a correlation between the two characteristic directions. However, there are cases where the ~1-10-mas scale VLBI jet directions are significantly misaligned with respect to the apparent proper motion direction.
Bakos Judit
Frey Sabine
Lambert Sébastien Bernard
Moór Attila
Titov Oleg
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