RadioAstron Early Science Program Space-VLBI AGN survey: strategy and first results
Kirill V. Sokolovsky (for the RadioAstron AGN Early Science Working, Group)

TL;DR
RadioAstron’s Space-VLBI survey of AGN achieved high-resolution observations revealing extremely high brightness temperatures, providing insights into AGN jet physics and the interstellar medium.
Contribution
This paper presents the first results and strategy of a Space-VLBI survey of AGN using RadioAstron, achieving unprecedented baseline lengths and brightness temperature measurements.
Findings
Detected fringe signals at baselines up to 25 Earth diameters.
Measured brightness temperatures around 10^13 K, exceeding inverse Compton limits.
Identified promising AGN for detailed follow-up observations.
Abstract
RadioAstron is a project to use the 10m antenna on board the dedicated SPEKTR-R spacecraft, launched on 2011 July 18, to perform Very Long Baseline Interferometry from space - Space-VLBI. We describe the strategy and highlight the first results of a 92/18/6/1.35cm fringe survey of some of the brighter radio-loud Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) at baselines up to 25 Earth diameters (D_E). The survey goals include a search for extreme brightness temperatures to resolve the Doppler factor crisis and to constrain possible mechanisms of AGN radio emission, studying the observed size distribution of the most compact features in AGN radio jets (with implications for their intrinsic structure and the properties of the scattering interstellar medium in our Galaxy) and selecting promising objects for detailed follow-up observations, including Space-VLBI imaging. Our survey target selection is based…
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