Image:

The hotspots project some distance out from the relatively relaxed bridge, giving the lobes a bottleneck structure. Similar structures are quite common in classical doubles (there are at least five cases in this Atlas), but 3C 184.1 is a particularly clear example. The structure suggests that the hotspots have suddenly become able to push outwards faster than before, perhaps because of a drop in the density of the surrounding gas at a certain radius, for instance at the boundary between the host galaxy's atmosphere and the start of the true inter-galactic medium. The same effect could arise from a sudden increase in the beam density and hence energy output, or from a stabilization of a jet that had previously wobbled around in its pointing direction.

Higher-resolution images of the hotspots are given by Leahy et al. (1997), who note a possible jet feeding in to the north hotspot.