A New Catalog of Head Tail Radio Galaxies from the VLA FIRST Survey

TL;DR

This paper presents a catalog of 717 new head--tail radio galaxies identified from the VLA FIRST survey, including detailed classifications, optical counterparts, and physical properties, contributing significantly to the understanding of radio galaxy morphologies.

Contribution

The study provides the first large, systematic catalog of head--tail radio galaxies with detailed morphological and physical classifications, expanding the known sample significantly.

Findings

Catalog includes 717 new HT sources with optical counterparts.

Identifies 287 NAT and 430 WAT radio galaxies with specific morphological features.

Sources span luminosities from 10^{38} to 10^{45} erg/s and redshifts up to 2.01.

Abstract

The head--tail (HT) morphology of radio galaxies is seen for a class of radio sources where the primary lobes are being bent in the intercluster weather due to strong interactions between the radio jets and their respective intracluster medium. A systematic search has been carried out for new HT radio galaxies from the Very Large Array Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-Centimeters survey database at $1400\,\mathrm{MHz}$. Here, we present a catalog of 717 new HT sources, among which 287 are narrow-angle tail (NAT) sources whose opening angle between the two lobes is less than $90^\circ$, and 430 are wide-angle tail (WAT) whose opening angle between the two lobes is greater than $90^\circ$. NAT radio sources are characterized by tails bent in a narrow ``V''-like shape; the jet bending in the case of WAT radio galaxies are such that the WATs exhibit wide ``C''-like morphologies. Optical counterparts are found for 359 HT sources. We report HT sources with luminosity ranges $10^{38} \lesssim L_{1.4\,\mathrm{GHz}} \lesssim 10^{45}\,\mathrm{erg\,s^{-1}}$ and redshifts up to 2.01. The various physical properties of these HT sources are mentioned here. Some statistical studies have been done for this large number of newly discovered HT sources.