The Event Horizon Telescope Image of the Quasar NRAO 530
Svetlana G. Jorstad, Maciek Wielgus, Rocco Lico, Sara Issaoun, Avery E. Broderick, Dominic W. Pesce, Jun 俊 Liu 刘, Guang-Yao Zhao, T. P. Krichbaum, Lindy Blackburn, Chi‐kwan Chan, Michaël Janssen, Venkatessh Ramakrishnan, Kazunori Akiyama, A. Alberdi, Juan Carlos Algaba, Katherine L. Bouman, Ilje Cho, Antonio Fuentes, José L. Gómez, Mark Gurwell, Michael D. Johnson, Jae-Young Kim, Ru-Sen Lu, I. Martí‐Vidal, Monika Mościbrodzka, Felix M. Pötzl, Efthalia Traianou, Ilse van Bemmel, W. Alef, Richard Anantua, Keiichi Asada, Rebecca Azulay, U. Bach, Anne-Kathrin Baczko, David Ball, Mislav Baloković, John Barrett, Michi Bauböck, B. A. Benson, Dan Bintley, R. Blundell, Geoffrey C. Bower, Hope Boyce, Michael Bremer, Christiaan D. Brinkerink, Roger Brissenden, S. Britzen, Dominique Broguière, Thomas Bronzwaer, Sandra Bustamante, Do‐Young Byun, J. E. Carlstrom, Chiara Ceccobello, Andrew Chael, Koushik Chatterjee, Shami Chatterjee, Ming‐Tang Chen, Yongjun 永军 Chen 陈, Xiaopeng Cheng, Pierre Christian, Nicholas S. Conroy, J. E. Conway, J. M. Cordes, T. M. Crawford, G. Crew, Alejandro Cruz-Osorio, Yuzhu Cui, Jordy Davelaar, Mariafelicia De Laurentis, Roger Deane, Jessica Dempsey, G. Desvignes, Jason Dexter, Vedant Dhruv, Sheperd S. Doeleman, Sean Dougal, Sergio A. Dzib, Ralph P. Eatough, Razieh Emami, H. Falcke, Joseph Farah, Vincent L. Fish, Ed Fomalont, H. Alyson Ford, Raquel Fraga-Encinas, William T. Freeman, Per Friberg, Christian M. Fromm, Peter Galison, Charles F. Gammie, Roberto García, Olivier Gentaz, Boris Georgiev, C. Goddi, Roman Gold, Arturo I. Gómez-Ruiz, Minfeng Gu, Kazuhiro Hada, Daryl Haggard
Abstract
Abstract We report on the observations of the quasar NRAO 530 with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) on 2017 April 5−7, when NRAO 530 was used as a calibrator for the EHT observations of Sagittarius A*. At z = 0.902, this is the most distant object imaged by the EHT so far. We reconstruct the first images of the source at 230 GHz, at an unprecedented angular resolution of ∼20 μ as, both in total intensity and in linear polarization (LP). We do not detect source variability, allowing us to represent the whole data set with static images. The images reveal a bright feature located on the southern end of the jet, which we associate with the core. The feature is linearly polarized, with a fractional polarization of ∼5%–8%, and it has a substructure consisting of two components. Their observed brightness temperature suggests that the energy density of the jet is dominated by the magnetic field. The jet extends over 60 μ as along a position angle ∼ −28°. It includes two features with orthogonal directions of polarization (electric vector position angle), parallel and perpendicular to the jet axis, consistent with a helical structure of the magnetic field in the jet. The outermost feature has a particularly high degree of LP, suggestive of a nearly uniform magnetic field. Future EHT observations will probe the variability of the jet structure on microarcsecond scales, while simultaneous multiwavelength monitoring will provide insight into the high-energy emission origin.