Probing the nature of compact ultra-steep spectrum radio sources with the e-EVN and e-MERLIN

TL;DR

This study uses e-MERLIN and e-EVN to observe ultra-steep spectrum radio sources, revealing that many are compact at milliarcsecond scales, which helps understand their nature better.

Contribution

First VLBI detections of ultra-steep spectrum sources at milliarcsecond resolution, highlighting their compact structures and advancing knowledge of their origins.

Findings

Two sources detected at milliarcsecond scales.

A significant fraction of ultra-steep spectrum sources are compact.

High-resolution VLBI observations are crucial for understanding these sources.

Abstract

We present first results from electronic Multi-Element Remotely Linked Interferometer Network (e-MERLIN) and electronic European VLBI Network (e-EVN) observations of a small sample of ultra-steep spectrum radio sources, defined as those sources with a spectral index alpha < -1.4 between 74 MHz and 325 MHz, which are unresolved on arcsecond scales. Such sources are currently poorly understood and a number of theories as to their origin have been proposed in the literature. The new observations described here have resulted in the first detection of two of these sources at milliarcsecond scales and show that a significant fraction of ultra-steep spectrum sources may have compact structures which can only be studied at the high resolution available with very long baseline interferometry (VLBI).