ORIENTATION MODELING OF RADIO GALAXY AND QUASAR PROPERTIES - EVIDENCE FOR A UNIFIED MODEL

We discuss the statistics of projection on the sky of a simple model for radio sources. The model has a core and two hot spots at unequal distance with an overall structure which is bent at the core. We examine the distributions of the observed sizes and bend angles in 114 quasars and 78 radio galaxies with z < 2, from our own data. We find that the observations are well matched by this model with (a) a size distribution matching the observed one, (b) core-hotspot length differences between 0 and 45 kpc, and (c) bend angles distributed between 0-degrees and approximately 25-degrees, where quasars are seen within 50-degrees of the source axis, and radio galaxies are seen at greater angles. We discuss the implications of these fits to unified models and source evolution.