Jet Speeds in Wide Angle Tailed Radio Galaxies.pdf

a r X i v : a s t r o - p h / 0 6 0 2 1 6 2 v 1 7 F e b 2 0 0 6 Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 000, 000–000 (0000) Printed 5 February 2008 (MN LATEX style file v2.2) Jet speeds in wide angle tailed radio galaxies Nazirah N. Jetha 1? , Martin J. Hardcastle 2 , and Irini Sakelliou 3 1 School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT 2 School of Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics, University of Hertfordshire, College Lane, Hatfield, Hertfordshire AL10 9AB 3 Max Planck Institut fu?r Astronomie, Ko?nigstuhl 17, D-69117, Heidelberg 5 February 2008 ABSTRACT We present a sample of 30 wide angle tailed radio galaxies (WATs) that we use to constrain the jet speeds in these sources. We measure the distribution of jet-sidedness ratios for the sample, and assuming that the jets are beamed, jet speeds in the range (0.3-0.7)c are obtained. Whilst the core prominence of the sample, which ought to be a reliable indicator of beaming, shows little correlation with the jet-sidedness, we argue that due to the peculiar nature of WATs core- prominence is unlikely to be a good indicator of beaming in these sources. We further show that if the jets are fast and light, then the galaxy speeds required to bend jets into C-shapes such as those seen in 0647+693 are reasonable for a galaxy in a merging or recently merged cluster. Key words: galaxies: active - galaxies: clusters - radio continuum: galaxies 1 INTRODUCTION Usually classified as FRI sources (Fanaroff Riley 1974), wide angle tailed radio galaxies (WATs) are now thought to be an in- teresting hybrid of both FRI and FRII morphologies; they exhibit well collimated inner jets, which flare suddenly into diffuse plumes. These jets, which typically extend for tens of kiloparsecs and often terminate in compact radio-bright features similar to the hotspots of FRII sources (Hardcastle Sakelliou 2004), appear superficially similar to the longer jets seen in FRII sources, whereas the diffuse plumes resemb