2011/03/15 by M. J. I. Brown, Michael J. I. Brown, Buell T. Jannuzi +3 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Active galactic nucleus #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Luminosity #Luminous infrared galaxy #Physics #Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology #Radio galaxy #Radio telescope #Sky #Star formation #Telescope #X-shaped radio galaxy #astro-ph.CO
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/2041-8205/731/2/l41
Accepted for publication in ApJ Letters. 5 pages, 4 figures and 1 table
arxiv created 2011/03/15 · openalex publication_date 2011/04/01 · arxiv updated 2015/05/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We have measured the radio continuum emission of 396 early-type galaxies brighter than K = 9, using 1.4 GHz imagery from the NRAO Very Large Array Sky Survey, Green Bank 300 ft Telescope, and 64 m Parkes Radio Telescope. For M K < −24 early-type galaxies, the distribution of radio powers at fixed absolute magnitude spans four orders of magnitude and the median radio power is proportional to K -band luminosity to the power 2.78 ± 0.16. The measured flux densities of M K < −25.5 early-type galaxies are greater than zero in all cases. It is thus highly likely that the most massive galaxies always host an active galactic nucleus or have recently undergone star formation.