Name of the Speaker(s): Susan Wright
Institution: University of Southampton, UK
Title of the communication:
Host Galaxies of Optically Violently
Variable Quasars
Preliminary abstract:
Unified schemes for radio-loud active galaxies suggest that the different
observed classes arise from one basic phenomenon, with the orientation of
the line of sight with respect to a relativistic jet determining the type
of object seen. In this scheme, optically violently variable (OVV) quasars
would be those systems seen end-on (ie down the jet), while those seen
edge-on would be Fanaroff-Riley type II (FRII) radio galaxies. If OVVs
and FRIIs are intrinsically the same and just viewed from different angles
then we would expect their host galaxies to be similar. We have obtained
deep optical and near-infrared images of a number of OVV quasars to study
the morphology of their host galaxies in order to test the proposed
unified schemes. Modelling of our data suggests that the host galaxies
of OVVs and FRIIs are indeed similar, consistent with unification.