We present observational results for extragalactic radio sources with milliarcsecond components, obtained with the 600 meter ring radio telescope RATAN-600 from 1st to 22nd December, 1997. For each source, a six frequency broad band radio spectrum was obtained by observing simultaneously with an accuracy up to a minute at 1.4, 2.7, 3.9, 7.7, 13 and 31 cm. The observed list is selected from Preston et al. (1985AJ.....90.1599P) VLBI survey and contains all the sources in the declinations between -30 and +43 degrees with a correlated flux density exceeding 0.1 Jy at 13 cm. The sample includes the majority of sources to be studied in the current VSOP survey and the future RadioAstron Space VLBI mission.
An exhaustive chemical characterization of dense cores is mandatory to our understanding of chemical composition changes from a starless to a protostellar stage. However, only a few sources have had their molecular composition characterized in detail. Here we present a 3mm line survey of L483, a dense core around a Class 0 protostar, which was observed with the IRAM 30m telescope in the 80-116GHz frequency range. We detected 71 molecules (140 including different isotopologs), most of which are present in the cold and quiescent ambient cloud according to their narrow lines (FWHM~0.5km/s) and low rotational temperatures (<~10K). Of particular interest among the detected molecules are the cis isomer of HCOOH, the complex organic molecules HCOOCH_3_, CH_3_OCH_3_, and C_2_H_5_OH, a wide variety of carbon chains, nitrogen oxides like N_2_O, and saturated molecules like CH_3_SH, in addition to eight new interstellar molecules (HCCO, HCS, HSC, NCCNH^+^, CNCN, NCO, H_2_NCO^+^, and NS^+^) whose detection has already been reported. In general, fractional molecular abundances in L483 are systematically lower than in TMC-1 (especially for carbon chains), tend to be higher than in L1544 and B1-b, and are similar to those in L1527. Apart from the overabundance of carbon chains in TMC-1, we find that L483 does not have a marked chemical differentiation with respect to starless/prestellar cores like TMC-1 and L1544, although it does chemically differentiate from Class 0 hot corino sources like IRAS 16293-2422. This fact suggests that the chemical composition of the ambient cloud of some Class 0 sources could be largely inherited from the dark cloud starless/prestellar phase. We explore the use of potential chemical evolutionary indicators, such as the HNCO/C_3_S, SO_2_/C_2_S, and CH_3_SH/C_2_S ratios, to trace the prestellar/protostellar transition. We also derived isotopic ratios for a variety of molecules, many of which show isotopic ratios close to the values for the local interstellar medium (remarkably all those involving ^34^S and ^33^S), while there are also several isotopic anomalies like an extreme depletion in ^13^C for one of the two isotopologs of c-C_3_H_2_, a drastic enrichment in ^18^O for SO and HNCO (SO being also largely enriched in ^17^O), and different abundances for the two ^13^C substituted species of C_2_H and the two ^15^N substituted species of N_2_H^+^. We report the first detection in space of some minor isotopologs and quantify for the first time the deuterium fractionation for HDCCO and c-C_3_D. The exhaustive chemical characterization of L483 presented here, together with similar studies of other prestellar and protostellar sources, should allow us to identify the main factors that regulate the chemical composition of cores along the process of formation of low-mass protostars.
We have conducted a deep radio survey with the Very Large Array at 1.4GHz of a region containing the Hubble Deep Field (HDF). This survey overlaps previous observations at 8.5GHz allowing us to investigate the radio spectral properties of microJansky sources to flux densities greater than 40{mu}Jy at 1.4GHz and greater than 8{mu}Jy at 8.5GHz. A total of 371 sources have been catalogued at 1.4GHz as part of a complete sample within 20 of the HDF.
Radio continuum observations made with the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope at 1.4GHz are presented for 274 galaxies in the Virgo Cluster region. The observations are partly full syntheses and partly east-west strip distributions. For the 55 detected galaxies the emission is separated into central and extended components. A brief summary of the analysis is also given.
The 1135 galaxies in the Reference Catalogue of Bright Galaxies (Cat. <VII/16>) with declinations between +10{deg} and +70{deg} were surveyed at 6-cm wavelength with a 3-sigma detection limit of about 30mf.u.; of these 149 were detected. For 90 of these galaxies, spectral indices were obtained. There is a suggestion that the elliptical galaxies have flat spectra more often than the spiral galaxies.
The 100m Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope and the 40m Owens Valley Radio Observatory telescope have been used to conduct a 31GHz survey of 3165 known extragalactic radio sources over 143deg^2^ of the sky. Target sources were selected from the NRAO VLA Sky Survey in fields observed by the Cosmic Background Imager (CBI); most are extragalactic active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with 1.4GHz flux densities of 3-10mJy. The resulting 31GHz catalogs are presented in full online. Using a maximum-likelihood analysis to obtain an unbiased estimate of the distribution of the 1.4-31GHz spectral indices of these sources, we find a mean 31-1.4GHz flux ratio of 0.110+/-0.003 corresponding to a spectral index of {alpha}=-0.71+/-0.01 (S_{nu}_{prop.to}{nu}^{alpha}^); 9.0%+/-0.8% of sources have {alpha}>-0.5 and 1.2%+/-0.2% have {alpha}>0. By combining this spectral-index distribution with 1.4GHz source counts, we predict 31GHz source counts in the range 1mJy<S_31_<4mJy, N(>S_31_)=(16.7+/-1.7)deg^-2^(S_31_/1mJy)^-0.80+/-0.07^.
We present integrated pulse profiles at 5GHz for 71 pulsars, including eight millisecond pulsars (MSPs), obtained using the Shanghai Tian Ma Radio Telescope. Mean flux densities and pulse widths are measured. For 19 normal pulsars and one MSP, these are the first detections at 5GHz --and for a further 19, including five MPSs, the profiles have a better signal-to-noise ratio than previous observations. Mean flux density spectra between 400MHz and 9GHz are presented for 27 pulsars and correlations of power-law spectral index are found with characteristic age, radio pseudo-luminosity, and spin-down luminosity. Mode changing was detected in five pulsars. The separation between the main pulse and interpulse is shown to be frequency independent for six pulsars, but a frequency dependence of the relative intensity of the main pulse and interpulse is found. The frequency dependence of component separations is investigated for 20 pulsars, and three groups are found: in seven cases, the separation between the outmost leading and trailing components decreases with frequency, roughly in agreement with radius-to-frequency mapping; in 11 cases, the separation is nearly constant; in the remaining two cases, the separation between the outmost components increases with frequency. We obtain the correlations of pulse widths with pulsar period and estimate the core widths of 23 multicomponent profiles and conal widths of 17 multicomponent profiles at 5GHz using Gaussian fitting, and we discuss the width-period relationship at 5GHz compared with the results at at 1.0 and 8.6GHz.
We observed 51 sources in the Q-U-I JOint TEnerife (QUIJOTE) cosmological fields which were brighter than 1Jy at 30GHz in the Planck Point Source Catalogue (version 1), with the Very Large Array at 28-40GHz, in order to characterise their high-radio-frequency variability and polarization properties. We find a roughly log-normal distribution of polarization fractions with a median of 2%, in agreement with previous studies, and a median rotation measure (RM) of ~1110rad/m^2^ with one outlier up to ~64000rad/m^2^ which is among the highest RMs measured in quasar cores. We find hints of a correlation between the total intensity flux density and median polarization fraction. We find 59% of sources are variable in total intensity, and 100% in polarization at 3{sigma} level, with no apparent correlation between total intensity variability and polarization variability. This indicates that it will be difficult to model these sources without simultaneous polarimetric monitoring observations and they will need to be masked for cosmological analysis.
We present results from four years of twice-weekly 15GHz radio monitoring of about 1500 blazars with the Owens Valley Radio Observatory 40m telescope. Using the intrinsic modulation index to measure variability amplitude, we find that, with >6{sigma} significance, the radio variability of radio-selected {gamma}-ray-loud blazars is stronger than that of {gamma}-ray-quiet blazars. Our extended data set also includes at least 21 months of data for all AGN with 'clean' associations in the Fermi Large Area Telescope First AGN Catalog, 1LAC. With these additional data, we examine the radio variability properties of a {gamma}-ray-selected blazar sample. Within this sample, we find no evidence for a connection between radio variability amplitude and optical classification. In contrast, for our radio-selected sample we find that the BL Lac object subpopulation is more variable than the flat-spectrum radio quasar (FSRQ) subpopulation. Radio variability is found to correlate with the synchrotron peak frequency, with low- and intermediate-synchrotron-peaked blazars varying more than high-synchrotron-peaked ones. We find evidence for a significant negative correlation between redshift and radio variability among bright FSRQs.
We present 8.4GHz Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) observations of 75 extragalactic radio sources drawn from the scintillating sources discovered in the Microarcsecond Scintillation-induced Variability survey.