DOI

https://doi.org/10.48717/h10r-w396

Project

EY043

Title

Imaging the jet in NGC 1068 at 5 GHz

Abstract

The nature of radio emission in radio-quiet active galactic nuclei (AGNs) shows a large diversity: starbursts, small jets, shocks, winds, or something unknown. In the nearby archetype Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC 1068, there exists a quite complex radio nucleus possibly consisting of a polar outflow, a dusty disc and shocks on pc scales. To strengthen the scenario, we propose to carry out three-epoch VLBI observations with the EVN plus e-MERLIN at 5 GHz for 9 h per epoch during the normal disc-recording session. With the powerful configuration, we would accurately restore large-scale diffuse emission and answer where the most compact feature is located at the centre. If the polar outflow and the dusty thick disc have significant free-free emission at lower frequencies, we expect to independently reveal an X-shaped structure in the low-resolution (10-20 mas) VLBI map. Moreover, the multi-epoch phase-referencing observations could allow us to monitor the entire VLBI structure, characterise its variability, and further probe the shock interpretation for the inner mas-scale elongated structure.