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.

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 include an acknowledgment of the MOJAVE (Lister and Homan, 2005, AJ, 130, 1389) and 2cm Survey (Kellermann et al., 2004, ApJ, 609, 539) programs, and to please contact us so we can add a link to our external publications page.

WHAT'S NEW:

VLBA Archival Data at 2 cm:  In order to fill in temporal gaps in the coverage on selected jets, we are currently adding 15 GHz data from the VLBA archive. These epochs are listed on the individual source pages, and will be available for public download after the publication of our main kinematics paper (Lister et al., in preparation, slated for completion in Spring 2008).

MOJAVE in the GLAST Era:  Regular VLBA observations of the MOJAVE sample  have been approved by NRAO to continue through June 2009. These are being carried out at the approximate rate of 25 AGN per month at 2 cm wavelength. Each AGN is observed every two to twenty-four months, depending on its rate of angular evolution on the sky.  The current list of sources being monitored can be found in our information table. After the launch of GLAST in Spring 2008, up to 100 additional LAT-detected gamma-ray AGN that have correlated 2 cm VLBA flux exceeding ~100 mJy will be added to the sample.  The current sample includes:

• all 133 sources in the original (flux-limited) MOJAVE sample.
  
• all currently known EGRET gamma-ray AGN above declination -20°
  
• 33 low-luminosity AGN (15 GHz luminosity < 10²⁶ W/Hz)
•  8 gigahertz-peaked spectrum sources
• 11 AGN from the previous 2cm Survey that have unusual kinematics.

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 last 4 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!

Kinematics Plots:  Plots are now available for selected jets in the MOJAVE survey  showing the separation of individual jet features with respect to the (presumed stationary) core feature as a function of time. These are subject to change as we add new epochs.

MOJAVE Phase-II:  During 2006 (BL137), a single multi-frequency VLBA epoch at
8.1, 8.4, 12.1 and 15.3 GHz was obtained for all sources in the MOJAVE sample. These are currently being reduced, and are being used to explore the properties of intervening gas responsible for modifying the observed polarization of the jet emission.