L111, 1997 August 1 We have detected an optical jet in the BL Lac object 3C 371 that coincides with the radio jet in this object in the central few kiloparsecs. The most notable feature is a bright optical knot 3
(4 kpc) from the nucleus that occurs at the location where the jet apparently changes its direction by about 30°. The radio, near-infrared, and optical observations of this knot are consistent with a single power-law spectrum with a radio-optical spectral index 
ro = -0.81. One possible scenario for the observed turn is that the jet is interacting with the material in the bridge connecting 3C 371 to nearby galaxies and the pressure gradient is deflecting the jet significantly.
Subject headings: galaxies: active
galaxies: individual (3C 371, UGC 11130)galaxies: jets
1 Based on observations carried out with the Nordic Optical Telescope, La Palma, Canary Islands.
2 Based on observations collected at the German-Spanish Astronomical Centre, Calar Alto, operated by the Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Heidelberg, jointly with the Spanish National Commission for Astronomy.
The number of known optical counterparts of radio jets in radio galaxies and quasars has been steadily increasing during the last few years. At least seven such cases are now known (M87, 3C 273, PKS 0521-36, 3C 66B, 3C 264, 3C 78 and 3C 120), and even more objects are suspected to harbor an optical jet (e.g., de Koff et al. 1996). In one case, 3C 66B (Fraix-Burnet 1997), optical emission has been tentatively detected also in the counterjet side. The radio emission of the jets is thought to be synchrotron radiation from relativistic electrons spiraling in the magnetic field of the jet and transporting energy to the outer lobes. At some high frequency corresponding to the highest energy electrons the spectrum cuts off, and the intensity falls quickly. If this cutoff frequency is high enough, optical emission can be detected from the jet.
As the number of confirmed optical jets has increased, some patterns in their properties have emerged. In the optical the jets always seem to have a 
knotty
appearance, and their structure in radio and optical is very similar. However, small differences in the optical and radio structures can be seen. For instance, in a detailed study of M87, Sparks, Biretta, & Macchetto (1996) found that the optical
UV emission seems to be more concentrated in the central parts of the jet, and the knots show higher contrast in the optical than in the radio. Also, the radio-optical spectral index seems to be flatter in the knots than in the interknot regions. The optical jets are usually small in comparison with the radio jets that can continue tens of kiloparsecs away from the nucleus. Some optical jets display twists andor bifurcations like the jet in 3C 264 (Crane et al. 1993).
The apparent one-sidedness of the optical jets indicates that relativistic beaming is playing an important role in modifying the intrinsic intensity distribution. If the sources with optical jets have their jets directed close to the line of sight, then these sources should be smaller than corresponding radio sources on average. Sparks et al. (1995) compared the linear sizes of a sample of 3CR radio galaxies with optical jets to those without a jet and found the radio structures of the galaxies with an optical jet to be smaller by a factor of about 3. This is in accordance with the relativistic beaming picture, but intrinsic differences between the jet and counterjet cannot be ruled out yet. The optical counterjet in 3C 66B (Fraix-Burnet 1997), if confirmed, would argue for intrinsic differences between the jet and counterjet as the optical emission in the counterjet side of 3C 66B is much stronger than what is expected from relativistic beaming.
3C 371 is a nearby (z = 0.051) BL Lac object that belongs to the 1 Jy BL Lac sample of Stickel et al. (1991). The BL Lac object is hosted by a luminous (MV = -22.4) elliptical galaxy that is surrounded by a small cluster of galaxies (Stickel, Fried, & Kühr 1993 and references therein). It has been mapped with the VLA at 6 cm by Wrobel & Lind (1990), who found a dominant central core and two faint lobes east and west of the core. The eastern lobe is very diffuse with no apparent connection with the nucleus, but the western lobe is connected to the nucleus by a wiggling jet that terminates into a weak hot spot inside the lobe (see Fig. 4 below). Wrobel & Lind (1990) interpret this structure as an edge-brightened double radio source with the angle between the source axis and line of sight large enough so that the lobes do not overlap. At a distance of about 3 from the nucleus the jet apparently turns about 30°. At this location a sudden brightening of the jet is seen. This bright knot has been resolved by Akujor et al. (1994) at 18 cm with the MERLIN array. Their 0
25 resolution map shows the bright knot to be extended in the direction roughly perpendicular to the line connecting the knot and the nucleus (see Fig. 2 below).
The R- and B-band observations were carried out at the 2.56 m Nordic Optical Telescope (Table 1). The pixel scales of the TEK and Loral chips were 0176 pixel-1 and 011 pixel-1, respectively. The R-band observations of 1995 October 20 consist of 6 × 600 s exposures that have saturated the nucleus of the galaxy. In 1996 July 13 the individual exposures were kept between 120 and 180 s to avoid saturation. The B-band observations consist of 6 × 600 s exposures with no saturation of the nucleus. The images were de-biased and flat-fielded with IRAF using twilight flats, and the individual exposures were registered and averaged. Photometric calibration of the field was achieved on the night of 1996 June 17 by observing standard stars from Landolt (1983, 1992). The accuracy of this calibration is approximately 0.04 mag in R and 0.06 mag in B. As a check of our photometry we measured a star in the 3C 371 field that is listed in the UBV calibration sequence of McGimsey & Miller (1977). For star 4 in their sequence (B = 16.98 ± 0.04) we measure B = 16.97 ± 0.06. This star was also used for photometric calibration of the R-band observations on 1995 October 20.
The K
-band observations were carried out at the Calar Alto 3.5 m telescope using the MAGIC near-infrared camera. The pixel scale was 032 pixel-1. A total of 60 frames were obtained, each consisting of 15 frames of 2 s each that were summed and saved. For background subtraction the exposures on target were interlaced with exposures of a field a few arcminutes away from 3C 371. A total of 16 such exposures were obtained, each 15 × 2 s. The science exposures were background subtracted by the scaled median of the sky frames, and scattered light and bad pixels were removed. After flat-fielding with domeflats the individual frames were registered and co-added following McLeod & Rieke (1994). Standard stars from Elias et al. (1982) were observed for photometric calibration. Although there were some thin clouds during the night, the standard stars gave consistent results, and we believe the accuracy to be much better than 0.1 mag.
To remove the light from the host galaxy and core component in the B- and R-band images, we first determined the point-spread function (PSF) from field stars and subtracted a scaled PSF at the location of the nucleus. The scaling was such that a maximum amount of light was subtracted without producing a hole in the underlying galaxy. The subtraction was made to facilitate later analysis by removing the diffraction spikes around the nucleus. The ISOPHOTE package in IRAF was then used to fit ellipses to the galaxy light distribution, and a model galaxy image was created and subtracted from the original image. This process was iterated a few times to find and mask objects that were overlapping the 3C 371 host galaxy. The resulting residual images (Figs. 1a and 1c [Pl. L10]) have a background very close to zero, showing that the galaxy light distribution has been successfully modeled. Outside the nuclear region (r > 4), the intensity profile first follows de Vaucouleurs profile very well, until at a radius of about 13 (18 kpc) the profile starts to deviate from this law in the form of excess emission (see Fig. 4 below).
Fig. 1
In the K-band image we do not have a bright star in the field to model and subtract the diffraction spikes. We thus proceeded directly with ellipse fitting by masking overlapping objects as previously and rejecting a fraction (8%) of highest pixels from the fit. A dark ring around the nucleus and four diffraction spikes are visible in the residual image (Fig. 1e). Also, a relatively bright object is seen about 2 from the nucleus at P.A. 
160°. After careful analysis of the individual K-band images, we concluded that this feature is caused by telescope movements during the 15 × 2 s exposures (only the sum of the 15 exposures was saved). We estimate that because of this effect, about 6% of the light is moved from the center of 3C 371 to the feature 2 away. This also affects the K-band photometry, but we have not made any correction for this since we are not certain of the exact amount of correction needed.
For the comparison of radio and optical images we measured the positions of 10 stars in the R-band field that can be found in the Automatic Plate Measuring Facility Northern Sky Catalogue (Irwin, Maddox, & McMahon 1994), and we determined the transformation from pixel positions to equatorial coordinates. Our astrometry indicates that the positions of the optical and radio nuclei agree within the positional errors that we estimate to be 08.
Figure 1 shows a 19 × 19 field around the nucleus of 3C 371 in all three bands after removing the core and galaxy light from the images. The left-hand side panels show the raw images, and the right-hand side panels show the corresponding fields after 40 deconvolutions with the Lucy algorithm (Lucy 1974). Several objects can be seen to the west of the nucleus. There is clearly optical and near-infrared emission coming from the point where the jet apparently changes its direction and where a bright radio knot is also seen. This can be seen in Figure 2, where we have overlaid the deconvolved best-resolution R-band image of 1996 July 13 with the 18 cm radio contours from Akujor et al. (1994). The knot is at a distance of 3 (4 kpc, H0 = 50 km s-1 Mpc-1) from the nucleus at P.A. = 240°, and it shows similar structure in the optical as in the radio, i.e., it is extended in the direction roughly perpendicular to the jet direction. Some faint emission trailing the knot can also be seen, most notably in the B-band image. The sharp features around the nucleus in the deconvolved R- and B-band images are probably artifacts caused by incomplete removal of diffraction spikes. Two faint objects are visible farther out from the knot in the direction in which the radio jet continues in radio maps. The one farthest out from the nucleus is consistently seen in B- and R-band images at the same location. As there is no one-to-one correspondence between the radio and optical emission here, their relation to the radio jet is unclear. The outer one of these two faint objects could be one of the numerous background objects embedded in the light from the 3C 371 host, and the inner one is probably a noise peak amplified by the deconvolution process.
Fig. 2
Figure 3 shows the broadband spectrum of the 3 knot. The radio measurements were obtained from the literature, and the optical and near-infrared data points are from our observations. X-ray data are also available in the literature (e.g., Comastri, Molendi, & Ghisellini 1995), but they are not employed here since they always refer to the total emission from 3C 371. Table 2 lists the results of our photometry. Here we have converted the K-band flux to K-band flux using the formula by Wainscoat & Cowie (1992). The R-band flux is the average of the observations on 1995 October 20 and 1996 July 13. The error bars in the radio are either from the original publication, or, if no error was given, a 1 
error of 10% was assumed. In our measurements the error bars include the errors from photon statistics and calibration but do not include the possible error from incomplete background subtraction at the location of the objects. The radio-optical spectral index ro of the knot is -0.81 (S
), which is within the range of observed radio-optical spectral indices in jets, typically -0.9 to -0.6 (Crane et al. 1993). The spectral index in the radio domain is r = -0.70 (or -0.72 if one ignores the deviant point at log = 9.2). Thus, some steepening of the spectrum on the optical is indicated, but given the errors in Figure 3 the observations can be well fitted with a single power-law from the radio to the optical with no indication of a break or cutoff in the spectrum.
Fig. 3
The jet and overall radio morphology of 3C 371 bear some resemblance to those in M87. The jet in M87 is relatively faint until an apparent distance of approximately 125, where a sudden brightening (knot A) is seen both in radio and opticalUV regions (e.g., Sparks et al. 1996). Farther out from the nucleus, faint concentrations of emission are seen until the jet fades from visibility at a distance of about 20. The lifetimes of the electrons emitting optical synchrotron radiation are generally too short for them to be supplied by the nucleus (about a few hundred years in the case of M87; see, e.g., Biretta, Stern, & Harris 1991), and thus some mechanism to supply fresh electrons in the hot spots is needed. Strong shocks in the jet are considered to be the most probable locations for particle acceleration. For instance, Falle & Wilson (1985) modeled the M87 jet with a steady fluid jet to which shocks are triggered by the decreasing pressure of the interstellar medium. They interpret knot A in M87 as the location of a strong shock where a reconfinement of the jet occurs. A similar mechanism could be working in the bright 3 knot in 3C 371, although the appearance of both knots is more like a Mach disk and not a conical shape, as in the model of Falle & Wilson (1985).
The jet in 3C 371 apparently changes direction at the location of the radio and optical knot . This property is shared only by 3C 346, which displays an even more sudden bend at the location of a brightening in the optical jet (de Koff et al. 1996). If the jet in 3C 371 is relativistic at the projected distance of 3 from the nucleus, then differences in the Doppler factor along the jet could produce apparent brightenings. An enhancement of a factor of 
10 is needed in the R-band to raise the 3 knot from the background to the observed level. Wrobel & Lind (1990) concluded that the viewing angle 
is moderate for 3C 371. If we assume = 30° and a Lorenz factor 
= 4 in the jet, then a 5° change in the jet direction toward the observer is sufficient. For = 2 and = 1.5 the corresponding values are 10° and 20°, respectively. Relativistic electrons moving with bulk relativistic speed in a helical jet is one possible scenario in this case. The structure seen in the radio map of Akujor et al. (1994) lends some support to this scenario, but it may not be realistic since it is not known if the electrons really move with bulk relativistic speeds in jets at a distance of about 4 kpc from the nucleus.
The change of direction could also be attributed to a pressure increase in the interstellar medium that diverts the jet from its original direction. This kind of redirection of the jet has been suggested to be the reason for double hot spots in the edge-brightened double radio sources (Williams & Gull 1984, 1985). The pressure increase could be supplied by the interaction of the 3C 371 host with neighboring galaxies. Figure 4 (Plate L11) shows the 3C 371 field in the R-band after a smooth de Vaucouleurs model galaxy has been subtracted from the image. A forced de Vaucouleurs profile was used here to bring out the deviations from a smooth profile more clearly. The model was fitted to the inner r < 13 region, which is the region reasonably well represented by de Vaucouleurs profile. Figure 4 clearly shows the bridge of emission connecting the 3C 371 host to two spiral galaxies in the southwest corner of the field, as noted earlier by Stickel et al. (1993). Their spectroscopy also shows that the brighter of these two galaxies lies at the same redshift as the 3C 371 host. The bridge seems to continue to a distance of about 20 kpc from the nucleus of the 3C 371 host. We do not see the bridge extending closer to the nucleus than this, but it is still tempting to hypothesize that gas drawn from the nearby spiral galaxies is responsible for the turn in the jet. Evidence for nonsymmetrical distribution of gas around the 3C 371 nucleus was presented by Stickel et al. (1993), who showed that the [O III] 
4959, 5007 emission is more extended toward the companion galaxies in the southwest than toward the opposite direction. They interpreted this as a sign of tidal interaction between the 3C 371 host and the southwest galaxies.
Fig. 4
Evidence for jet interaction with the environment has been presented by previous authors both in smaller and larger scales than in 3C 371. Baum et al. (1997) presented the results of a Hubble Space Telescope and MERLIN study of 3C 264, which also exhibits an optical jet. In 3C 264 there is strong evidence for interaction between the jet and a high-density circumnuclear region at 300400 pc radius. Also, evidence for strong jet-cloud interaction in the quasar 3C 254 at a projected distance of about 15 kpc was presented by Crawford & Vanderriest (1997). The 4 kpc distance of interaction in 3C 371 is thus not unprecedented. It therefore seems that the environmental effects can have a significant impact on jet appearance, particularly in the case of 3C 371, where the confinement of the jet probably plays a major role in the production of optical emission.
The authors thank Joan Wrobel for making the 6 cm radio image available. This work has been supported by the Academy of Finland and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through SFB 328 (J. H.) and FR 32542-1 (K. J.).
. 1992, AJ, 104, 340 First citation in article | Crossref | ADS. 1985, Nature, 313, 34 First citation in article | Crossref | ADS
Full image (478kb) | Discussion in textA mosaic showing a 19 × 19 field around the nucleus of 3C 371 after subtraction of the core and galaxy light. The panels on the left show the raw images, and the panels on the right show the same fields after 40 deconvolutions with the Lucy algorithm. (a, b) The B-band image; (c, d) the R-band image of 1996 July 13; (e, f) the K-band image. A small cross marks the position of the optical nucleus. Light smoothing has been applied to the K-band image. North is up and east is to the left in all panels.
Full image (206kb) | Discussion in textDeconvolved R-band image of 1996 July 13 overlaid with the 18 cm radio contours of Akujor et al. (1994), used here with permission. The field size is 83 × 72, north is up, and east is to the left. The arrow indicates the direction of the jet after the bright spot 3 from the nucleus. The tick marks are at 05 intervals.
Full image (12kb) | Discussion in textThe broadband spectrum of the knot 3 from the nucleus. The error bars are 2 errors. The fitted line has a slope of -0.81. The radio data are from Browne et al. (1982; 408 MHz), Perley, Fomalont, & Johnston (1980; 1500 MHz), Perley & Johnston (1979; 1480, 4900 MHz), Akujor et al. (1994; 1660 MHz), and Pearson, Perley, & Readhead (1985; 4885 MHz). Optical and near-infrared data are from this Letter.
Full image (416kb) | Discussion in textThe R-band image of the field around 3C 371. The insert at the lower left-hand corner shows the image with low contrast. In the large image a galaxy model has been subtracted as described in the text, the image has been smoothed lightly, and it is shown here with high contrast to emphasize low surface brightness areas. The optical image has been overlaid by the contours of the 5 GHz radio image of Wrobel & Lind (1990). The field size is 176 × 159, north is up, and east is to the left. Note the bridge of emission connecting the 3C 371 host to two spiral galaxies in the southwest corner.
| Date | Telescope | Band | Detector | Exposure (s) |
Seeing (arcsec) |
| 1995 Oct 20... | NOT | R | TEK 1024 × 1024 | 3600 | 0.83 |
| 1996 Jun 17... | NOT | B | Loral 2048 × 2048 | 3600 | 0.80 |
| 1996 Jul 09... | Calar Alto 3.5 m | K |
NICMOS3 256 × 256 | 1800 | 1.15 |
| 1996 Jul 13... | NOT | R | TEK 1024 × 1024 | 1830 | 0.65 |
| Band | Distance (arcsec) |
P.A. (deg) |
Flux (  Jy) |
| B... | 3.2 | 242 | 6.0 ± 0.6 |
| R... | 3.0 | 240 | 11 ± 1 |
| K... | 3.2 | 242 | 15 |