A new catalogue of head-tail radio galaxies from LoTSS DR1

TL;DR

This paper presents a new catalogue of 55 head-tail radio galaxies identified from the LoTSS DR1 survey, highlighting their morphology, cluster associations, and physical properties, advancing understanding of galaxy cluster environments.

Contribution

The study provides the first systematic catalogue of HT radio galaxies from LoTSS DR1, including detailed morphological classification and cluster association analysis.

Findings

55 new HT radio galaxies identified

30 are associated with known galaxy clusters

Most sources have redshifts below 0.5

Abstract

The unique morphology of head-tail (HT) radio galaxies suggests that radio jets and their intra-cluster medium interact strongly. We conducted a systematic search for HT radio galaxies using the LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey first data release (LoTSS DR1) at 144 MHz. In this paper, a catalogue of fifty-five new HT radio galaxies is presented, ten of which are narrow-angle tailed sources (NATs) and forty-five of which are wide-angle tailed sources (WATs). NATs are characterised by tails that are bent like a narrow `V' shape with a less than 90 degree opening angle. The opening angle between jets in WAT radio galaxies is greater than ninety degrees, exhibiting wide `C'-like morphologies. We found that thirty out of fifty-five HT radio galaxies reported in this article are associated with known galaxy clusters. Most of the sources presented in the current paper have redshifts $<$ 0.5. The various physical properties and statistical studies of these HT radio galaxies are presented.