NRAO: National Radio Astronomy Observatory

About this Image

The active galaxy 3C120, located at about 450 million light-years near the Orion constelation, hosts a jet of particles with relativistic energies and velocities, observed here at radio wavelengths (1.3 cm) with the VLBA. The monthly sequence of images, starting in November 1997, shows the motion of several regions of enhanced energy moving in the plane of the sky at velocities of about 4-5 times that of the speed of light. Variability in the emission of these regions is interpreted as resulting from the interaction of the jet with "clouds" of material surrounding the central engine of the active galaxy (see the journal article for details). There is also a version of this image without the contours here.

Thanks to the VLBA we can now make "movies" of these cosmic jets, by combining sequence of images of 3C120. The following movie files are available for 3C120:

• 3c120k-new.avi (avi movie with constant total flux contours)
• 3c120k-new-labels.avi (same as above, but with a couple of informative initial frames)
• 3c120k-new-labels.gif (same as above, but in animated gif format)

Investigator(s):  José-Luis Gómez et al.

Alternate Resolutions

Help

This image is available in the following downloadable versions:

• 500 x 570 color JPEG
• 725 x 826 color JPEG

If you would like to obtain a higher resolution version of this image, please contact Pat Smiley.

For More Information

• Read the Press Release
• Read the Journal article
• Up one level for more info on Seyferts
• For unfamiliar terms, visit the NRAO Radio Astronomy Glossary

Technical Data

Telescope	VLBA
Date of Observation	1999-03-00
Type of Observation	Continuum Observations
Band	K
Wavelength	1.2 cm
Frequency	22 GHz
Center of Image	RA: 04:33:11.10, Dec: 05:21:15.60 (J2000)
Field of View	0.0000 x 0.0000 degrees
Technical Caption



Astronomical database entries for 3C120
• Query NED for images of 3C120
• Query SIMBAD for more 3C120 data

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