3C 273 host galaxy with Hubble Space Telescope coronagraphy
Creators
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1.
Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur
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2.
French National Centre for Scientific Research
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3.
California Institute of Technology
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4.
Johns Hopkins University
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5.
Ames Research Center
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6.
Space Telescope Science Institute
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7.
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
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8.
University of California, San Diego
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9.
Jet Propulsion Lab
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10.
European Space Astronomy Centre
Abstract
The close-in regions of bright quasars’ host galaxies have been difficult to image due to the overwhelming light coming from quasars. With coronagraphic observations in visible light using the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) on the Hubble Space Telescope, we removed 3C 273 quasar light using color-matching reference stars. The observations revealed the host galaxy from 60″ to 0.″2 with nearly full angular coverage. Isophote modeling has revealed a new core jet, a core blob, and multiple smaller-scale blobs within 2.″5. The blobs could potentially be satellite galaxies or infalling materials towards the central quasar. Using archival STIS data, we constrained the apparent motion of its large scale jets over a 22 yr timeline. By resolving the 3C 273 host galaxy with STIS, our study validates the use of coronagraphs on extragalactic sources for obtaining new insights into the central (at ∼kpc scales) regions of quasar hosts.
Copyright and License
© The Authors 2024. Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Acknowledgement
We thank the anonymous referee for constructive suggestions that improved this Letter. B.B.R. would like to acknowledge the pioneering leadership of the late M. Schmidt, whose office at the Cahill Center in Caltech was assigned to B.B.R. in 2019, for inspiring future generations with his groundbreaking discovery of 3C 273. We thank Dean Hines, Anand Sivaramakrishnan, and Hsiang-Chih Hwang for discussions in the initial preparation of the observation proposal. We thank Paul Kalas, Tom Esposito, Yuguang Chen, and Zhi-Xiang Zhang for discussions. Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. Support for program number HST GO-16715 was provided through a grant from the STScI under NASA contract NAS5-26555. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 101103114. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (PROTOPLANETS, grant agreement No. 101002188). This work has made use of data from the European Space Agency (ESA) mission Gaia (https://www.cosmos.esa.int/gaia), processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC, https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dpac/consortium). Funding for the DPAC has been provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia Multilateral Agreement. This research made use of Photutils, an Astropy package for detection and photometry of astronomical sources (Bradley et al. 2023).
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Additional details
Related works
- Is new version of
- Discussion Paper: arXiv:2402.09505 (arXiv)
- Is supplemented by
- Dataset: https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/A+A/683/L5 (URL)
Funding
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- NAS5-26555
- Space Telescope Science Institute
- HST GO-16715
- European Commission
- 101103114
- European Research Council
- 101002188
Dates
- Accepted
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2024-02-14
- Available
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2024-03-01Published online