New Radio Observations Of ‘Old Faithful’

Extract

We present new arcsecond-scale radio images of the gravitational lens system 0957+561 A, B. Observations at 1.6GHz were made in 1991 October with the VLA in A/B configuration with a resolution of 1.5 arcsec (Fig. 1, left). The lowest contour is 0.37 mJy/beam. In addition to the compact A and B image components, and the familiar NE/SW radio double-lobe structure surrounding image A, this map shows two interesting new features:

1. (a) a long, thin feature extending south and west from the NE lobe, some 10 arcsec in extent, confirming the detection by Avruch et al. (1994). It is reminiscent of the ‘arc’ features seen in optical images of lensing clusters, and hopefully can be used to constrain models of the cluster mass distribution. (For the superstitious, one can note that the position angle of the arc, 17°, is identical to that of the VLBI jet in image B, a few arcseconds to the west.)

2. (b) a low-level extension of the B image in the NW direction. We are not aware that this has been seen before. A possible interpretation of this feature is a continuation of the jet emission seen in VLBI images of B, whose counterpart in A is seen in higher resolution maps. The change of position angle between the VLBI and arcsec-scale jets would indeed have opposite parities in the A and B images.