0000000001306884

AUTHOR

D.c. Homan

MOJAVE VII. Blazar jet acceleration

We discuss acceleration measurements for a large sample of extragalactic radio jets from the Monitoring Of Jets in Active Galactic Nuclei with VLBA Experiments (MOJAVE) program, which studies the parsec-scale jet structure and kinematics of a complete, flux-density-limited sample of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Accelerations are measured from the apparent motion of individual jet features or "components" which may represent patterns in the jet flow. We find that significant accelerations are common both parallel and perpendicular to the observed component velocities. Cone search capability for table J/ApJ/706/1253/agn (Positions for AGN sources)

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MOJAVE. XIII. New 15GHz observations on 1994-2013

We present 1625 new 15GHz (2cm) VLBA images of 295 jets associated with active galactic nuclei (AGNs) from the MOJAVE and 2cm VLBA surveys, spanning observations between 1994 August 31 and 2013 August 20. For 274 AGNs with at least 5 VLBA epochs, we have analyzed the kinematics of 961 individual bright features in their parsec-scale jets. A total of 122 of these jets have not been previously analyzed by the MOJAVE program. In the case of 451 jet features that had at least 10 epochs, we also examined their kinematics for possible accelerations. At least half of the well-sampled features have non-radial and/or accelerating trajectories, indicating that non-ballistic motion is common in AGN je…

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MOJAVE. XII. Acceleration of blazar jets

We report on the acceleration properties of 329 features in 95 blazar jets from the MOJAVE Very Long Baseline Array program. Nearly half the features and three-quarters of the jets show significant changes in speed and/or direction. In general, apparent speed changes are distinctly larger than changes in direction, indicating that changes in the Lorentz factors of jet features dominate the observed speed changes rather than bends along the line of sight. Observed accelerations tend to increase the speed of features near the jet base, <~10-20pc projected, and decrease their speed at longer distances. The range of apparent speeds at a fixed distance in an individual jet can span a factor of a…

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