B2114+022: A Gravitational Lens and/or What?

Pedro Augusto (1,2), Ian W. A. Browne (1), P Peter N. Wilkinson (1), Neal J. Jackson (1), and Chris D. Fassnacht (3)

(1) University of Manchester, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Macclesfield, Cheshire SK11 9DL
(2) Centro de Astrofísica da Universidade do Porto, Rua do Campo Alegre, 823, 4150 Porto, Portugal
(3) National Radio Astronomy Observatory, PO Box O, Socorro, New Mexico 87801, USA

B2114+022 is a on-going seven years old mistery. A unique object among the about 15000 radio sources of JVAS+CLASS, it has had extensive data collected over the years: VLA, MERLIN, VLBI, Keck and HST, among other. Its radio structure consists of four radio components (two compact and two extended; the widest separation is 2''.5) in a configuration unlike that of any known lens system. No optical counterparts of any of these radio loud components are seen down to H=23 mag or I=25 mag, although two galaxies with I<= 21 mag (z=0.3157 and z=0.5883) are seen in the field. Astrometric measurements suggest that these areclose to three of the four radio components. Heavyoptical extinction is ruled out for the farthest component. Hypothesis for what might be going on in this puzzling system include two-screen gravitational lensing and multiple active galactic nuclei.

Class:	Proceedings
Links:	ADS
Reference:	Augusto P., et al. 2001, Gravitational Lensing: Recent Progress and Future Goals, ASP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 237. Edited by Tereasa G. Brainerd and Christopher S. Kochanek. San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific, ISBN: 1-58381-074-9, 2001, p.75.
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