Letter to the Editor

Very long baseline interferometry observation of the triple AGN candidate J0849+1114

¹ MTA-ELTE Extragalactic Astrophysics Research Group, ELTE TTK, Pázmány Péter sétány 1/A, 1117 Budapest, Hungary
e-mail: krisztina.g@gmail.com
² Konkoly Observatory, MTA Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences, Konkoly Thege Miklós út 15-17, 1121 Budapest, Hungary
³ Department of Physics and Astronomy, George Mason University, 4400 University Drive, MSN 3F3, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA
⁴ Department of Physics and Astronomy, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA 22807, USA

Received: 18 August 2019
Accepted: 6 September 2019

Abstract

Context. In the hierarchical structure formation model, galaxies grow through various merging events. Numerical simulations indicate that mergers can enhance the activity of central supermassive black holes in galaxies.

Aims. A system of three interacting galaxies, called J0849+1114, has recently been identified and multi-wavelength evidence of all three galaxies containing active galactic nuclei has recently been found. The system has substantial radio emission; we aim to investigate the origin of this radio emission with a high-resolution radio interferometric observation and to discover whether it is related to star formation or to one or more of the active galactic nuclei in the system.

Methods. We performed high-resolution continuum observation of J0849+1114 with the European Very Long Baseline Interferometry Network at 1.7 GHz.

Results. We detected one compact radio emitting source at the position of the easternmost nucleus. Its high brightness temperature and radio power indicate that the radio emission originates from a radio-emitting active galactic nucleus. Additionally, we found that significant amount of flux density is contained in ∼100 milliarcsec-scale feature related to the active nucleus.