Three New Spiral Galaxies with Active Nuclei Producing Double Radio Lobes

TL;DR

This study identifies three new spiral galaxies with active nuclei producing double radio lobes, challenging the common association of such features solely with elliptical galaxies and highlighting environmental influences.

Contribution

It reports the discovery of three new spiral galaxies with double radio lobes and analyzes their properties, expanding understanding of galaxy types capable of producing large-scale radio jets.

Findings

More massive spirals can produce more powerful radio jets.

Most such spirals are found in dense environments like galaxy groups.

About half are the central brightest galaxies in their systems.

Abstract

Double radio lobes are generally believed to be produced by active nuclei of elliptical galaxies. However, several double-lobed radio sources have been solidly found to be associated with spiral galaxies. By cross-matching $\sim9\times10^5$ spiral galaxies selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR8 data with the full 1.4-GHz radio source catalogs of NRAO VLA Sky Survey and Faint Images of Radio Sky at Twenty-centimeters, we identify three new spiral galaxies: J0326$-$0623, J1110+0321 and J1134+3046 that produce double radio lobes, and five double-lobed spirals previously known. By combining the newly discovered and all the other known cases in literature, we confirm the relation that more massive spirals could produce more powerful large-scale radio jets. We find that most of these spiral galaxies are located in a galaxy group or a poor cluster, in which the environment is denser than in the field, and about half of them are the central brightest galaxies in their parent system. We therefore suggest that the environment is one of the key factors for a spiral to produce double radio lobes.