HST/ACS Emission Line Imaging of Low Redshift 3CR Radio Galaxies I: The Data

TL;DR

This paper presents high-resolution HST/ACS imaging of low-redshift 3CR radio galaxies, providing detailed emission line maps, flux measurements, and morphological analysis to enhance understanding of their narrow-line regions and their relation to radio properties.

Contribution

The study offers new high-resolution emission line images and flux data for low-redshift 3CR radio galaxies, improving upon previous datasets with refined reduction techniques and continuum subtraction methods.

Findings

Emission line fluxes follow expected redshift-luminosity trends.

Line luminosity correlates with total radio power.

Emission region size increases with redshift.

Abstract

We present 19 nearby (z<0.3) 3CR radio galaxies imaged at low- and high-excitation as part of a Cycle 15 Hubble Space Telescope snapshot survey with the Advanced Camera for Surveys. These images consist of exposures of the H-alpha (6563 \AA, plus [NII] contamination) and [OIII] 5007 \AA emission lines using narrow-band linear ramp filters adjusted according to the redshift of the target. To facilitate continuum subtraction, a single-pointing 60 s line-free exposure was taken with a medium-band filter appropriate for the target's redshift. We discuss the steps taken to reduce these images independently of the automated recalibration pipeline so as to use more recent ACS flat-field data as well as to better reject cosmic rays. We describe the method used to produce continuum-free (pure line-emission) images, and present these images along with qualitative descriptions of the narrow-line region morphologies we observe. We present H-alpha+[NII] and [OIII] line fluxes from aperture photometry, finding the values to fall expectedly on the redshift-luminosity trend from a past HST/WFPC2 emission line study of a larger, generally higher redshift subset of the 3CR. We also find expected trends between emission line luminosity and total radio power, as well as a positive correlation between the size of the emission line region and redshift. We discuss the associated interpretation of these results, and conclude with a summary of future work enabled by this dataset.