Observations of the cores of extended quasars

Extract

A critical test of the simple relativistic beaming models is provided by the search for structural changes in the weak cores of lobe-dominated quasars. In these sources, which are expected to be close to the plane of the sky, superluminal motion should be comparatively rare. We are engaged in the study of a complete sample of 30 extended quasars (Barthel et al. 1984), ranging in projected size from 40h⁻¹ to 200h⁻¹ kpc (H_o = 100h, q_o = 0.05). High resolution multi-epoch observations have been obtained for two objects, the quasars 1721+343 and 0742+318, at 5 GHz (1982.3, 1983.3, 1986.5) and 10.7 GHz (1986.2, 1986.5). Superluminal expansion with transverse velocities of 3.1h⁻¹ c has been detected in the core of 1721+343, which is the largest quasar known (Barthel et al., these proceedings). No superluminal motion was found in 0742+318. The large and small scale structure of 1721+343 are shown in fig.1a,b. The spectra of the individual components point to component A as the core