Image:

The larger DRAGN is 3C 66B, identified with UGC 01841, a large elliptical which dominates a a group of galaxies at the edge of cluster Abell 347. X-ray emission from the group has been mapped by Miller et al. (1999). UGC 01841 is sited at the brightest part of 3C 66B, which at higher resolution (see the Other images page) turns out to be a pair of twin jets. There is a fainter companion galaxy about 20 arcsec to the south-east; its gravitational pull may be partly responsible for the bend in the jets.

Clicking on this image will give you the full-sized version of the same picture, but with a logarithmic LUT to bring up the fainter emission. The fine structure of the faint emission is due to imaging artefacts.

See Alan Bridle's image gallery for yet another version of this image and a radio-optical overlay.

See the Other Images page for a high-resolution image of the jets in the centre. The bright red dot in that image is the radio core, burnt out to show the fainter emission. Again, the detailed structure in the faint emission is mainly due to artefacts.

Unlike 3C 31, the jets in 3C 66B are asymmetric in brightness; the brighter one was detected in optical emission by Butcher et al. (1980)) and has been studied with the HST (Jackson et al. 1993, Sparks et al. 1994). The brightness asymmetry, together with the distortion of the large-scale structure, suggested to Leahy et al. (1986) that 3C 66B is seen at a relatively small angle to the jet axis.