The VSOP GHz Active Galactic Nucleus Survey. III. Imaging Results for the First 102 Sources

The VLBI Space Observatory Programme (VSOP) mission is a Japanese-led project to study radio sources with sub-milliarcsec resolution using an orbiting 8 m telescope, HALCA, along with global arrays of Earth-based telescopes. Approximately 25% of the observing time is devoted to a survey of compact active galactic nuclei (AGNs) that are stronger than 1 Jy at 5 GHz - the VSOP AGN Survey. This paper, the third in the series, presents the results from the analysis of the first 102 Survey sources. We present high-resolution images and plots of visibility amplitude versus projected baseline length. In addition, model-fit parameters to the primary radio components are listed, and from these the angular size and brightness temperature for the radio cores are calculated. For those sources for which we were able to determine the source frame core brightness temperature, a significant fraction (53 out of 98) have a source frame core brightness temperature in excess of 10 12 K. The maximum source frame core brightness temperature we observed was 1.2×10 13 K. Explaining a brightness temperature this high requires an extreme amount of relativistic Doppler beaming. Since the maximum brightness temperature one is able to determine using only ground-based arrays is of the order of 10 12 K, our results confirm the necessity of using space VLBI to explore the extremely high brightness temperature regime.