Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-12T11:34:21.225Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Gravitation and Jet Induced Velocities in the Narrow Line Region of Active Galaxies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 August 2015

Mark Whittle*
Affiliation:
Astronomy Department, University of Virginia, Charlottesville VA 22903, U.S.A.

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The basic question I want to address is : “What mechanism or mechanisms accelerate the gas in the narrow line region of active galaxies, yielding the observed profile shapes.” At the present time there is no generally accepted answer to this question. Part of the problem dates back to the first few Seyferts that were discovered which, in retrospect, seem to have had anomalously broad lines. For example NGC 1068, MKN 3, and MKN 78 have [OIII] λ 5007 FWHM ~ 1000 km s-1, which is clearly greater than anything associated with a normal galaxy velocity fields. An obvious implication was that these high velocities were in some way related to the activity. This view was reinforced by the discovery of a correlation between [OIII] FWHM and non-thermal radio luminosity (Wilson and Willis 1981). When many radio sources were found to have linear double or triple morphology (e.g. Ulvestad and Wilson 1984a,b), a natural explanation seemed to be outflowing radio jets which stir up the narrow line region and thus generate the correlation between line width and radio luminosity.

Type
Joint Discussions
Copyright
Copyright © Kluwer 1989

References

Franx, M., and Illingworth, G.D., 1988, Astrophys. J. Lett, 327, L55.Google Scholar
Jedrzejewski, R.I., and Schechter, P.L., 1988, Astrophys. J. Lett., 330, L87.Google Scholar
Pelat, D., Alloin, D., and Fosbury, R.A.E., 1981, M.N.R.A.S., 195, 787.Google Scholar
Ulvestad, J.S., and Wilson, A.S., 1984a, Astrophys. J., 278, 544.Google Scholar
Ulvestad, J.S., and Wilson, A.S., 1984b, Astrophys. J., 285, 439.Google Scholar
Whitmore, B.C., and Kirshner, R.P., 1981, Astrophys. J., 250, 43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whittle, M., 1985a, M.N.R.A.S., 213, 1.Google Scholar
Whittle, M., 1985b, M.N.R.A.S., 213, 33.Google Scholar
Whittle, M., Pedlar, A., Meurs, E.J.A., Unger, S.W., Axon, D.J., and Ward, M.J., 1988 Astrophys. J., 326, 125.Google Scholar
Wilson, A.S., and Willis, A.G., 1981, Astrophys. J., 240, 429.Google Scholar