Monitoring Of Jets in Active galactic nuclei with VLBA Experiments (MOJAVE)

Hugh Aller, Margo Aller, Tigran Arshakian, Marshall Cohen, Jose-Luis Gomez, Dan Homan, Talvikki Hovatta, Matthias Kadler,
Ken Kellermann, Preeti Kharb, Yuri Kovalev (P.I., email: yykovalev@gmail.com), Matt Lister, Jack Livingston, Alexander Pushkarev, Alexander Plavin,
Eduardo Ros, Tuomas Savolainen, Elena Shablovinskaya, Teresa Toscano, Anton Zensus (Team Member Listing)

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MOJAVE is a long-term program to monitor radio brightness and polarization variations in jets associated with active galaxies visible in the northern sky. Approximately 1/3 of these were observed from 1994-2002 as part of the VLBA 2 cm Survey. These jets are powered by the accretion of material onto billion-solar-mass black holes located in the nuclei of active galaxies. Their rapid brightness variations and apparent superluminal motions indicate that they contain highly energetic plasma moving nearly directly at us at speeds approaching that of light. MOJAVE observations are made with the world's highest resolution telescope: the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) at wavelengths of 7 mm, 1.3 cm, and 2 cm, which enables scientists to make full polarization images with an angular resolution better than 1 milliarcsecond. MOJAVE program uses these data to better understand the complex evolution and magnetic field structures of these jets on light-year scales, close to where they originate in the active nucleus, and how this activity is correlated with a high energy electromagnetic and neutrino emission.

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