Extragalactic Radio Source Studies

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The extragalactic radio astronomy program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) will emphasize the study of gravitational lenses, the development of Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) and the study of the structure of extragalactic radio sources. The principal observational task is to complete the MIT survey, including the production of the 4000 self-calibrated radio maps that constitute the core of the work. That material forms the basis of gravitational lens search, carried out jointly with colleagues at Princeton and California Institute of Technology. The VLA snapshots are examined and classified, and the most likely gravitational lensing. The resulting examples will then be used to study the distribution of matter in galaxies and in the universe as a whole. The temporal variations of lensed complexes will be followed, and as in the first successfully monitored example, there will be a concerted effort to determine the value of the Hubble constant, and if the value is discordant, to understand the cosmological implications of such variations. The survey will also provide raw material to allow the search for radio galaxies and quasars of very high redshift.