Jet speeds in wide-angle tailed radio galaxies

Abstract

We present a sample of 30 wide-angle tailed radio galaxies (WATs) that we use to constrain the jet speeds in these sources. We measure the distribution of the jet-sidedness ratios for the sample, and assuming that the jets are beamed, the jet speeds in the range (0.3-0.7)c are obtained. Whilst the core prominence of the sample, which ought to be a reliable indicator of beaming, shows little correlation with the jet sidedness, we argue that due to the peculiar nature of the WATs, core prominence is unlikely to be a good indicator of beaming in these sources. We further show that if the jets are fast and light, then the galaxy speeds required to bend the jets into C-shapes such as those seen in 0647+693 are reasonable for a galaxy in a merging or recently merged cluster. © 2006 RAS.