A Chandra Snapshot Survey for 3C Radio Galaxies with redshifts between 0.3 and 0.5

TL;DR

This study presents Chandra X-ray observations of 19 3C radio galaxies with redshifts 0.3-0.5, detecting nuclear and extended X-ray emissions, and analyzing their properties to enhance understanding of these sources.

Contribution

It provides the first X-ray data for a subset of 3C sources in the specified redshift range, including spectral analysis for the brightest nuclei and detection of various extended emissions.

Findings

X-ray detected in all but one nucleus

Identification of X-ray emission from radio hotspots and clusters

Extended X-ray emission observed on kiloparsec scales

Abstract

This paper contains an analysis of short Chandra observations of 19 3C sources with redshifts between 0.3 and 0.5 not previously observed in the X-rays. This sample is part of a project to obtain Chandra data for all of the extragalactic sources in the 3C catalogue. Nuclear X-ray intensities as well as any X-ray emission associated with radio jet knots, hotspots or lobes have been measured in 3 energy bands: soft, medium and hard. Standard X-ray spectral analysis for the 4 brightest nuclei has been also performed. X-ray emission was detected for all the nuclei of the radio sources in the current sample with the exception of 3C 435A. There is one compact steep spectrum (CSS) source while all the others are FRII radio galaxies. X-ray emission from two galaxy clusters (3C 19 and 3C 320); from 6 hotspots in 4 radio galaxies (3C 16, 3C 19, 3C 268.2, 3C 313); and extended X-ray emission on kpc scales in 3C 187 and 3C 313, has been detected.