MOJAVE (Monitoring Of Jets in Active galactic nuclei with VLBA Experiments) is a long-term program to monitor radio brightness and polarization variations in jets associated with active galaxies visible in the northern sky. Approximately 2/3 of these were observed from 1994-2002 as part of the VLBA 2 cm Survey. These jets are powered by the accretion of material onto billion-solar-mass black holes located in the nuclei of active galaxies. Their rapid brightness variations and apparent superluminal motions indicate that they contain highly energetic plasma moving nearly directly at us at speeds approaching that of light.  Our observations are made with the world's highest resolution telescope: the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) at a wavelength of 2 cm, which enables us to make full polarization images with an angular resolution better than 1 milliarcsecond (the apparent separation of your car's headlights parked on the Moon, as seen from Earth). We are using these data to better understand the complex evolution and magnetic field structures of these jets on light-year scales, close to where they originate in the active nucleus, and how this activity is correlated with gamma-ray emission detected by NASA's Fermi observatory.

For astronomers: All calibrated (u,v) visibility and FITS data for the MOJAVE and 2 cm Survey programs are available via html links on the source pages. If you are interested in Stokes Q,U,V (linear and circular polarization) FITS images, please contact us.

If you intend to use these data in a publication, we ask that you please contact us so we can add a link to our external publications page, and ask that you include the following acknowledgment: "This research has made use of data from the MOJAVE database that is maintained by the MOJAVE team (Lister et al., 2009, AJ, 137, 3718)"

WHAT'S NEW:

New MOJAVE Program Announced:   Beginning in September 2013, the focus of the MOJAVE program will shift from observations of complete AGN samples to focus on two specific areas of key importance in understanding relativistic AGN outflows: jet acceleration/precession, and the polarization structure and kinematics of high synchrotron peaked blazars. Thirteen 24 hour long VLBA sessions per year have been approved until 2016, and will be devoted to multi-epoch, full polarimetric 15 GHz observations of a selected sample of:
    - 27 jets that have shown significant accelerations and/or inner jet position angle changes over time
    - 83 high-spectral peaked AGNs in the Fermi 2LAC catalog above declination -20 deg. with mean >100 MeV spectral index harder than 2.1.

Each AGN will be observed every 4 weeks to every 12 months, depending on its rate of angular evolution on the sky and jet activity level.  New sources will be observed every 3 months until their optimal cadence can be established.

Rotation Measure Maps:
As part of a VLBA multifrequency project in 2006, we have produced 8.1-15.3 GHz rotation measure maps of the MOJAVE sample. These have been published by Hovatta et al. 2012, and can be found on our rotation measure map page.

MOJAVE is a VLBA Key Science Project:
The MOJAVE program has been designated a Key Science Project by NRAO, in recognition of its contributions and impact on the astrophysics community.

Blazar Monitoring Program List:
Most of the blazars in MOJAVE are monitored at other wavelengths by a variety of instruments. This blazar monitoring list page contains a sortable table of all blazars known to be monitored at optical wavelengths, as well as known TeV-emitting AGNs and MOJAVE-monitored sources.

Superluminal Motion Demonstration Applets and Lab Activities: 
The MOJAVE collaboration has developed several software applets that demonstrate the principle of apparent superluminal motion. One is a  Flash software applet developed by REU student Quinn Looker and Prof. Matthew Lister of Purdue University, and the other is
a 3-D Vpython-based simulation recently developed by Prof. Dan Homan of Denison University.  The Vpython applet and an accompanying laboratory exercise for an introductory astronomy level course can be accessed at http://personal.denison.edu/~homand/superluminal/

Joint Fermi-MOJAVE papers:  We have found several strong connections between the VLBA radio jet properties of MOJAVE blazars and their Fermi-detected gamma-ray emission. Details have been published in Lister et al. 2011, in Pushkarev, Kovalev, & Lister 2010, Savolainen et al. 2010,  Pushkarev et al. 2009, Lister et al. 2009, and Kovalev  et al. 2009. In addition, we continute to contribute to multiwavelength studies of individual AGN, e.g. 3C390.3: Arshakian et al. 2010, 1510-089: Abdo et al. 2010, 3C 454.3: Vercellone et al. 2010, 1502+106: Abdo et al. 2009, J0948+0022: Abdo et al. 2009, and NGC 1275: Abdo et al. 2009. For a full list please visit our publications page.

Updated composite Fermi-VLBA Image:



We have released an updated composite image showing the gamma-ray sky based on the first 11 months of Fermi data, with zoomed-in VLBA images of bright extragalactic jets from the MOJAVE program. 

New Papers on Jet Kinematics:  We have completed an extensive analysis of speeds and accelerations of over 500 individual jet features in 127 MOJAVE blazar jets, based on 2,424 VLBA images taken during the period 1994-2007. The results have been published in two papers: Lister et al. 2009, and Homan et al. 2009

Image paper in AJ: A paper containing all 2 cm VLBA images of the MOJAVE flux-limited AGN sample from our program and the VLBA archive is now published in the Astronomical Journal. This paper also contains 'stacked' naturally weighted and uniformly weighted images, which are the average of all the available 2 cm VLBA images on that particular source.

Movies:  On our movies page you can click on the name of an active galaxy and get a MPEG movie showing its total intensity and linearly polarized jet evolution over the several years. Clicking on a thumbnail image will display a movie showing the total intensity evolution in the jet over the last twelve years (or a shorter time interval, depending on available data). Note that some movies contain blank frames due to missing temporal coverage - if you have published 2 cm VLBA data on any AGN listed on this web site and wish to contribute them to our online archive, please let us know!