# The HST view of FR I radio galaxies: evidence for non-thermal nuclear sources Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by AURA, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555 and by STScI grant GO-3594.01-91A

## 1 Introduction

Optical studies of radio galaxies are central for the understanding of the physics of their nuclei, by allowing to investigate the relationship between the environment/host galaxy and the occurrence of activity (e.g. the role of merging in the evolution of the nuclear fueling, Colina & De Juan colina (1995)), the formation of jets, the ‘schemes’ unifying different classes of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) and in particular radio galaxies with object dominated by relativistic beamed emission (blazars) (e.g. Urry & Padovani urry95 (1995)).

The original classification of radio galaxies by Fanaroff & Riley (fr (1974)) is based on a morphological criterion, i.e. edge darkened (FR I) vs edge brightened (FR II) radio structure. It was later discovered that this dicothomy corresponds to a (continuous) transition in total radio luminosity (at 178 MHz) which formally occurs at $`L_{178}=2\times 10^{26}`$ W Hz<sup>-1</sup>. In this paper we focus on the properties of FR I radio galaxies, which represent the lower power objects.

From the optical point of view FR I are associated with elliptical galaxies, are generally found in regions of galaxy density higher than powerful radio sources (Zirbel zirb97 (1997)) and often show signs of interactions (Gonzales-Serrano et al., gonz93 (1993)). Their optical spectra are dominated by starlight with no evidence for a continuum component directly related to the active nucleus. In general faint narrow lines are present while no broad lines are detected (Morganti et al. morg92 (1992), Zirbel & Baum zirb95 (1995)).

Significant progresses in the understanding of the inner structure of FR I have been obtained thanks to HST observations. Most importantly they revealed the presence of dusty or gaseous kpc scale disks in the nuclear regions of several FR I radio galaxies (Ford et al. ford94 (1994); Jaffe et al. jaff93 (1993); De Koff et al. deko95 (1995); Van der Marel, & Van den Bosch vand98 (1998)). The study of the dynamics of these disks provides one of the strongest pieces of evidence to date of the presence of supermassive black holes associated with the activity in galactic nuclei, with masses reaching $`10^9M_{\mathrm{}}`$ (Harms et al. harm94 (1994), Macchetto et al. macc97 (1997), Ferrarese et al. ferr96 (1996), Van der Marel & Van den Bosch vand98 (1998), Bower et al. bowe98 (1998)).

A further, newly discovered feature in FR I, which will concentrate on, are faint, nuclear optical components, which might represent the (as yet) elusive emission associated with the AGN. Their study can be a powerful tool to directly compare the nuclear properties of FR I with those of other AGNs, such as BL Lac objects and powerful radio galaxies.

In fact, in the frame of the unification schemes of low luminosity radio loud AGN, FR I radio galaxies are believed to be the misaligned counterparts of BL Lacs (for a review, see Urry & Padovani urry95 (1995)). In this scenario the non–thermal beamed emission from relativistic jets, which dominates in blazars, should also be present in radio galaxies although not amplified or even de-amplified. The possibility of directly detecting this component in the optical band thanks to the HST capabilities, has been explored by Capetti & Celotti (ac2 (1999)). They studied five radio galaxies whose extended nuclear discs can be used as indicators of the radio sources orientation. The ratio of the nuclear luminosities of FR I and BL Lacs with similar extended properties, shows a suggestive correlation with the orientation of the radio galaxies. This behavior is quantitatively consistent with a scenario in which also the FR I emission is dominated by the beamed radiation from a relativistic jet. Further, independent support to this interpretation comes from the rapid variability of the central source of M~87, the only object for which multi epoch HST data were available (Tsvetanov et al. tsve98 (1998)).

The role of obscuration in low luminosity radio galaxies is also still a matter of debate. Within the unification scheme for Seyfert galaxies, it is believed that in type 2 objects the Broad Line Region (BLR) and the nuclear continuum source are hidden by an absorbing, edge-on torus, while in Seyfert 1 our line of sight is within absorption-free visibility cones (Antonucci & Miller anto85 (1985)). Similarly, a combination of obscuration and beaming is essential for the unification of powerful radio sources (Barthel bart89 (1989)). However, although circumnuclear tori appear to be commonly associated with active galactic nuclei, there is as yet no evidence in favour of nuclear obscuring material in FR I (and this is not required by the FR I / BL Lac unified scheme, Urry & Padovani urry95 (1995)). A search for H<sub>2</sub>O megamasers (which have been successfully used to probe the dense molecular gas associated to the torus in Seyfert galaxies, Miyoshi et al. miyo95 (1995), Braatz et al. braa96 (1996)) in a sample of FR I galaxies gave negative results (Henkel et al. henk98 (1998)).

In order to further and thoroughly investigate these issues, we consider a complete sample of 33 3CR radio galaxies, morphologically identified as FR I sources. For 32 of these, HST/WFPC2 images are available in the public archive. Most of the images were taken as part of the HST snapshot survey of the 3C radio source counterparts, and are already presented by Martel et al. (martel (1998)) (objects with $`z<0.1`$) and by De Koff et al. (De Koff (1996)) (objects with $`0.1<z<0.5`$). Here we specifically focus on the origin of these unresolved nuclear sources, which we found to be present in most of the objects of the sample and to which we refer as Central Compact Cores (CCC).

The selection of the sample is presented and discussed in Sect. 2, while in Sect. 3 we describe the HST observations. In Sect. 4 and Sect. 5 we focus on the detection and origin of the CCC component, respectively and in Sect. 6 we discuss some of the consequences of our results. Our findings are summarized in the final Sect. 7.

## 2 The sample

Our sample comprises all radio galaxies belonging to the 3CR catalogue (Spinrad et al. spinrad (1985)) and morphologically identified as FR I radio sources by Laing et al. (laing (1983)) and/or Zirbel & Baum zirbel (1995) (see Table 1).

However, the powerful but simple original morphological FR I/II classification has revealed to be often inadequate, as being somewhat subjective and sensibly depending on the quality, resolution and frequency of the available radio maps. Also, several radio sources show a complex morphology: for example signatures of FR I structures (such as extended plumes and tails) can be detected together with typical characteristics of FR II sources (narrow jets and hot spots) in sources which might represent transition FRI/II objects (see e.g. Parma et al. parm87 (1987), Capetti et al. capetti95 (1995)). Furthermore, even among the edge darkened radio galaxies, a large variety of structures is present, including wide and narrow angle tails, fat doubles and twin jet sources. Although all these objects are classified as FR I and share the common characteristic of a low total radio luminosity, it is far from obvious that they represent a well defined class.

Therefore, in order to establish possible differences among the optical properties of the various subclasses of FR I galaxies and also directly re-assess their radio morphology against erroneous or doubtful identifications, we searched the literature for recent radio maps of each object of our sample. The radio structure of at least four sources is peculiar, there are several transition FR I/II objects and each of the FR I morphological ‘types’ described above is represented in the sample. In view of this ambiguity of the simple morphological classification, in the following we will also consider separately objects below and above a total radio luminosity of $`L_{178}=2\times 10^{26}`$ W Hz<sup>-1</sup>, i.e. the fiducial radio power separation between FR I and FR II. Two thirds of the sources of our sample lie below this value.

Having only excluded 3C~231 (M 82) from the original list, as it is in fact a well known starburst galaxy, the remaining radio galaxies constitute a complete, flux limited sample of 33 FR I sources. In Table 1 we report redshifts, radio fluxes and total luminosities as taken from the literature: redshifts span the range $`z=0.0037`$$`0.29`$, with a median value of $`z=0.03`$, and total radio luminosities at 178 MHz are between $`10^{23.7}`$ and 10<sup>28.1</sup> W Hz<sup>-1</sup> ($`H_0=75`$ km s<sup>-1</sup> Mpc<sup>-1</sup> and $`q_0=0.5`$ are adopted hereafter).

## 3 HST observations

HST observations are available in the public archive (up to July 1998) for 32 out of the 33 sources (only 3C~76.1 has not been observed). The HST images were taken using the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2). The pixel size of the Planetary Camera, in which the target is always located, is 0<sup>′′</sup>.0455 and the 800 $`\times `$ 800 pixels cover a field of view of $`36^{\prime \prime }\times 36^{\prime \prime }`$. The whole sample was observed using the F702W filter as part of the HST snapshot survey of 3C radio galaxies (Martel et al. martel (1998), De Koff et al. De Koff (1996)). For about half of the sources, additional archival images taken through narrow and broad filters are also available. The HST observations log is reported in Table 2.

The data have been processed through the PODPS (Post Observation Data Processing System) pipeline for bias removal and flat fielding (Biretta et al. biretta (1995)). Individual exposures in each filter were combined to remove cosmic rays events.

In Figs. 1, 2 we present the final broad band images of the innermost regions (1.5<sup>′′</sup> – 6 <sup>′′</sup>) of our 32 radio galaxies. The most interesting feature which is present in the great majority of them, is indeed an unresolved central source.

## 4 The Central Compact Cores

### 4.1 Identification of CCCs

While it is straightforward to identify unresolved sources when they are isolated, the situation is more complex when these are located at the center of a galaxy, superposed to a brightness distribution with large gradients and whose behaviour in the innermost regions cannot be extrapolated from its large scale structure with any degree of confidence.

We therefore adopted a simple operative approach: we derived the radial brightness profiles of the nuclear regions of all galaxies using the IRAF RADPROF task and measured the FWHM setting the background level at the intensity measured at a distance of $``$5 pixels ($``$0.23<sup>′′</sup>) from the center. In 22 cases the measured FWHM is in the range 0.05<sup>′′</sup> – 0.08<sup>′′</sup>, i.e. indicative of the presence of an unresolved source at the HST resolution.

In 5 cases, namely 3C~28, 3C~89, 3C~314.1, 3C~424 and 3C~438, the fitting procedure yields FWHM larger than $`0.15^{\prime \prime }`$. The behaviour of these sources is radically different from those in which a CCC is detected and therefore we believe that, even with this operative definition, no ambiguity exists on whether or not a central unresolved source is present.

The remaining 5 sources have complex nuclear morphologies. The central regions of 3C~75, 3C~293, 3C~305 and 3C~433 are covered by dust lanes. Bright compact knots are seen, but they are completely resolved and offset from the center of the galaxy. Conversely 3C~315 has a peculiar highly elongated structure, contrasting with the typical roundness of FR I host galaxies, and no central source is seen.

### 4.2 CCC photometry

The F702W transmission curve covers the wavelength range 5900 - 8200 Å and thus, within our redshift range, includes the H$`\alpha `$ and \[N II\] emission lines. To estimate the continuum emission of the CCC we therefore preferred, when possible, to use images obtained with the F814W or F791W filters which are relatively line-free spectral regions up to a redshift of 0.075.

We performed aperture photometry of the 22 CCCs, adopting the internal WFPC2 flux calibration, which is accurate to better than 5 per cent. However, the dominant photometric error is the determination of the background in regions of varying absorption and steep brightness gradients, especially for the faintest CCCs, resulting in a typical error of 10% to 20%. Narrow-band images were used, where available, to remove the line contamination from the F702W images. We found that the line contribution is typically 5 to 40 per cent of the total flux measured in the F702W filter, therefore even the uncorrected fluxes are (for our purposes) reliable estimates of the continuum level. Optical fluxes of the CCCs are given in Table 3.

HST images in two broad filters are available for 9 galaxies. However, only in 5 cases (3C~78, 3C~84, 3C~264, 3C~272.1, 3C~274) the accuracy of the photometry is sufficient to deduce reliable estimates of the optical slope. For the last three objects data were taken simultaneously in the two bands, which avoids uncertainties due to possible variability. Galactic extinction is significant (and we corrected for it) only in the case of 3C~84, for which $`A_B=0.7`$. In 3C~272.1 we estimated, by comparing the F547M and the F814W images, that the extended nuclear dust lane produces an absorption of 1 – 2 mag in the V band. The derived spectral indices (corrected for reddening) are in the range $`\alpha _o=0.71.3`$ ($`F_\nu \nu ^\alpha `$).

For the galaxies only showing diffuse emission we set as upper limits the light excess of the central 3x3 pixels with respect to the surrounding galaxy background. For the complex sources no photometry was performed.

## 5 Origin of the Central Compact Cores

As already pointed out in the introduction, although the presence of nuclear optical emission associated with the active nuclei of FR I radio galaxies is not a surprising feature, it is important to investigate its origin. With this aim we now explore possible (cor-)relations between the CCC flux/luminosity and other observed properties.

No trend is found between CCC luminosities and total radio power or absolute visual magnitude of the host galaxy. Conversely, the CCCs emission bears a clear connection with the radio core. In Fig. 3 we plot the optical flux of the CCCs $`F_o`$ versus the core radio flux $`F_r`$ (at $`5`$ GHz): a clear trend is visible.

In order to quantify this relation let us consider separately the low and high luminosity sub–samples.

The 18 CCCs associated to the low luminosity sources show a tight correlation between $`F_o`$ and $`F_r`$. Only one point, representing 3C~386, is well separated from the others. We perform a non-weighted least squares fit (excluding 3C 386): the correlation coefficient is $`r=0.88`$ which gives a probability that the points are taken from a random distribution of $`P=3.1\times 10^6`$. The dotted lines in Fig. 4 are the fits to the data using each of the two fluxes as independent variables. The best fit is represented by the bisectrix of these two regressions (dashed line) and has a slope of $`0.95\pm 0.10`$. The statistical parameters<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1We also performed the linear fit by using a weighted Chi-square method adopting ten per cent errors on both variables and a “robust” least absolute deviation method. The results both in term of probability and linear fits parameters are fully consistent (with even smaller errors) with those reported above. of the fits are reported in Table 4. A similarly strong correlation ($`P=6.0\times 10^6`$) is present also between radio core and CCC luminosities (Fig. 5). The fact that the correlation is found both in flux and luminosity gives us confidence that it is not induced by either selection effects or a common redshift dependence. Moreover the 3CR sample has been selected according to the total radio flux at low frequency which is only weakly correlated with the core properties entering in the correlations (e.g. Giovannini et al. giovannini (1988)).

Let us then consider the case of 3C 386, which we excluded from the statistical analysis. While all points are closely clustered around the linear fit, with a dispersion of only $``$ 0.4 dex, 3C 386 deviates by 3 orders of magnitude, clearly indicating that its optical/radio properties differ from the remaining of the sample. This suggestion is strengthened by the presence of a further peculiarity in the optical band of this object, i.e. the detection of a broad H$`\alpha `$ line (Simpson et al. simpson (1996)), atypical of FR I radio galaxies. In any case, although the inclusion of 3C 386 in the analysis decreases the statistical significance of the correlation to $`P=2.6\times 10^3`$, it would not affect our conclusions.

Turning now to the high luminosity sub-sample, five out of the nine points are upper limits, since no CCC is detected. This prevents us from performing a meaningful statistical analysis. Note, however, that the four detected CCC fluxes lie along the same correlation defined by the lower luminosity objects (see Fig. 5).

We conclude that a striking linear correlation is present between the core radio and CCC fluxes (and luminosities): it extends over four orders of magnitude, has an extremely high statistical significance, a small dispersion and a slope consistent with unity. Since the radio core emission is certainly originated as synchrotron radiation the above tight link is a strong suggestion that also the optical CCC emission is produced by the same non–thermal process.

Independent support to this hypothesis comes from considering the spectral information relative to the CCCs, which can be compared with that of sources where synchrotron emission dominates in the optical as well as in the radio band (e.g. blazars, optical jets). First of all, we find that the radio–optical spectral indices of the CCC of our radio galaxies span the range $`\alpha _{ro}0.6`$$`0.9`$, similar to those of optical jets (e.g. Sparks et al. smb94 (1994)) and at the upper end of the spectral indeces of blazars for which $`\alpha _{ro}0.2`$$`0.9`$ (e.g. Fossati et al. gfos (1998)).

Furthermore, the CCC optical spectral indices (determined however for only five sources) are in the range $`\alpha _o0.71.3`$, also typical of the synchrotron emitting sources mentioned above.

### 5.1 Alternative explanations

Even though synchrotron radiation provides a rather convincing interpretation of the nature of CCCs, in the following we consider and discuss other emission processes usually occurring in the nuclei of active galaxies. We should however already note that none of these mechanisms seems to naturally account for the linear correlation between the radio and optical CCC luminosities and even less for its small dispersion, as radio cores are strongly affected by relativistic beaming while in all the alternative scenarios the optical emission is essentially quasi–isotropic.

$``$ Nuclear cusps or star clusters:   
recent works have shown that stellar concentrations are often present in the nuclear regions of elliptical galaxies (e.g. Lauer et al. laue95 (1995)). However, the CCCs optical spectral slopes are not compatible with the ‘red’ colors typical of old stellar populations.

$``$ Nuclear starburst:   
as CCCs are observed in the great majority of the galaxies of our sample, star formation should be maintained continuously for a timescale comparable to the lifetime of the radio sources, i.e. $`10^{78}`$ yr (Parma et al. parm99 (1999)). Although some ad hoc mechanisms regulating the star formation rate might exist, this possibility appears implausible.

$``$ Accretion discs:   
the optical spectral information also contrasts with the emission expected at least in the simplest hypothesis of a Shakura-Sunyaev geometrically thin, optically thick disk, which generally predicts a harder spectral slope ($`\alpha \stackrel{<}{}0.3`$). A softer index is expected only at higher frequencies (UV–soft–X; e.g. Szuszkiewicz et al. ewa (1996)). No observational constraints are provided by more complex disc models (e.g. the recently proposed case of low density radiatively inefficient accretion flows, ADAF, Rees et al. rees82 (1982); Narayan & Yi narayan (1995); Chen et al. chen (1997)) as they can reproduce widely different spectral slopes in the optical band.

$``$ Emission line region:   
as already pointed out, although line emission contributes from 5 to 40 per cent, continuum emission provides the bulk of the total CCC flux.

We conclude from this analysis that there is no other likely explanation for the origin of CCCs, except non–thermal synchrotron emission.

## 6 Discussion

### 6.1 Implications for unified models

For the first time, thanks to the high spatial resolution of HST, it has been possible to separate the contribution of the host galaxy from the genuine nuclear emission in FR I radio galaxies, which manifests itself as a Central Compact Core.

CCCs appear to be associated with non–thermal synchrotron emission. Three pieces of evidence also suggest that the CCC radiation is anisotropic due to relativistic beaming:

1. Capetti & Celotti (ac2 (1999)) studied five radio galaxies in which HST images revealed the presence of extended nuclear discs, which appear to be useful indicators of the radio sources orientation. The FR I CCC luminosity shows a suggestive correlation with the orientation of the radio galaxies with respect to the line of sight;
2. Sparks et al. (spar95 (1995)) argued that jets are detected in the optical band only when pointing towards the observer. This would explain why jets with optical counterparts are smaller (they are foreshortened), brighter and one-sided (they are relativistically beamed) with respect to typical radio jets. Five sources of our sample (namely 3C~66B, 3C~78, 3C~264, 3C~274 and 3C~346) indeed show optical jets and these very same objects clearly stand out for being among the brightest CCC of their respective subsamples (see Fig. 6 where we report the CCC luminosity versus the total radio power). Sources with optical jets are also the only FR I galaxies detected in UV HST observations (Zirbel & Baum zirb98 (1998));
3. as noted above, the radio core emission is certainly beamed and the corresponding orientation dependence is reflected in the large spread found when comparing the core to extended (quasi–isotropic) radio luminosities (Giovannini et al. giovannini (1988)). Therefore if the optical emission were isotropic the $`F_o`$ vs $`F_r`$ correlation would show at least a similarly large scatter.

The beamed synchrotron scenario which emerges for the origin of the CCC is therefore a strong evidence in favour of the idea that FR I are the misoriented counterparts of BL Lacs. The large spread (3 orders of magnitude) in CCC luminosity among objects of similar extended properties (see Fig. 6) can be ascribed to different orientations. An extensive and quantitative analysis of this issue and of the relationship between FR I and BL Lacs in the light of these results will be presented in a forthcoming paper (Chiaberge et al., in prep).

### 6.2 Are there obscuring tori in FR I?

The observation of optical synchrotron emission has important consequences on the role/geometry of absorption structures in the nuclear regions of such objects. A very important result of our analysis is in fact the high fraction of galaxies in which the central source has been detected.

Limiting ourselves, for the moment, to the low luminosity subsample, we found a CCC in 85 % of the objects. The sources in which we do not detect it (namely 3C~75, 3C~293 and 3C~305) are three out of the four cases in which the center of the galaxy is affected by obscuration from a large scale dust structure (the fourth galaxy is 3C~272.1 whose CCC, although reddened, shines through the dust lane). In order to estimate the optical depth of obscuring material in these sources, we derived their expected optical flux from the CCC vs radio core flux correlation. We found that an extinction of only a few magnitudes ($`A_V\stackrel{<}{}6`$ mag, corresponding to a column density of $`N_H\stackrel{<}{}`$ 1.2 $`10^{22}`$ cm<sup>-2</sup>) is sufficient to hide the CCC optical emission. Therefore, even in these three cases the presence of an optically (Thomson) thick structure is not required (although cannot be ruled out) and the CCC emission might be simply obscured by the foreground dust. Infrared observations can address this issue.

The behaviour of the 11 sources with higher total radio luminosity is probably different and certainly more complex:

– four of them have CCC fluxes and luminosities well consistent with the correlations found for lower power FR I, and would simply lie on the high luminosity part of the radio–optical correlation (see Fig. 5)

– two of them show complex (possibly absorbed) nuclei;

– in the last five objects no unresolved component is detected (upper limits in Figs. 3, 6, 5; see also §4). The upper limits derived could be in general agreement with the $`F_o`$ vs $`F_r`$ CCC correlation, except possibly in the case of 3C~89 (the lowest point in Fig. 3).

The smaller number of CCC found could be simply due to the fact that this subsample is on average at higher redshift. Clearly, we cannot exclude the alternative possibility, i.e. that these sources are indeed obscured, which might indicate that the degree of obscuration increases with the source power (a crucial test here is the inclusion in the sample of high luminosity FR II radio galaxies; Chiaberge et al., in prep).

The detection of CCCs indicates that we have a direct view of the innermost nuclear regions of FR I. Limits on the extension of CCC are implied by the variability of the nucleus of M~87 on time scales of two months (Tsvetanov et al. tsve98 (1998)). Furthermore, since the optical emission in relativistic jets is likely to be produced co-spatially or even closer to the black hole with respect to the radio one, we can infer a further constraint on the CCC extension from VLBI observations. These in fact show that most of the radio emission comes from a source unresolved at mas resolution which can be as small as 0.01 pc, i.e. only $``$ 100 Schwarzschild radii for a $``$ 10<sup>9</sup> M black hole (e.g. Junor & Biretta juno95 (1995)).

It therefore appears that a “standard”, pc scale, geometrically thick torus with is not present in low luminosity radio galaxies. Any absorbing material must be distributed in a geometrically thin structure (our CCC detection rate implies a thickness over size ratio $`\stackrel{<}{}0.15`$) or thick tori are present only in a minority of FR I. This result is particularly intriguing since dusty nuclear discs on kpc scales have been discovered in several FR I and they indeed are geometrically thin (Jaffe et al. jaff96 (1996)). In this sense, the lack of broad emission lines in FR I cannot be accounted for by obscuration.

### 6.3 Limits on thermal disc emission and AGN efficiency

Except for blazars, whose overall spectral energy distributions are almost always dominated by the non–thermal emission from a relativistic jet, the nuclear emission of AGNs from the optical to the soft-X band is generally interpreted as thermal emission from accreting material. Conversely, we find that in FR I a non–thermal synchrotron component dominates the emission in all sources. In fact, an isotropic optical component sufficiently bright would produce a flattening in the radio/optical CCC correlation, due to the presence of an additional source of optical flux (with no radio counterpart), which we do not observe (see Figs. 4 and 5). This is surprising if one considers that, in a complete sample, a substantial fraction of the objects are observed at large angles from the line of sight and thus the emission from their jets is expected to be strongly de-beamed, favouring the detection of any isotropic (disc) emission.

The CCC fluxes thus set upper limits to the disc emission, which in turn imply extremely low radiative efficiency of the accretion process. Note, in fact, that the observed CCC emission corresponds to $`\stackrel{<}{}10^7`$$`10^5`$ of the Eddington luminosity of a $`10^9M_{\mathrm{}}`$ black hole, which appears to be typical for these radio galaxies. While these values argue against the presence of a radiatively efficient accretion phase, they are still compatible with the expected radiative cooling rate of low density and high temperature accreting plasma in which the electron–ion coupling is ineffective and most of the thermal energy is thus advected inwards and not radiated (Rees et al. rees82 (1982); also ADAF, e.g. Narayan & Yi narayan (1995), Chen et al. chen (1997) and ADIOS, Blandford & Begelman blandford (1999)). This latter possibility has been indeed proposed to account for the paucity of emission in radio galaxies harbouring supermassive black holes (Fabian & Rees 1995). The HST observations of CCC set consistent but independent constraints relative to the optical emission in these systems.

This low efficiency in producing thermal emission might also account for the lack of broad lines in FR I spectra, which could be attributed just to the lack of those ionizing photons which, in the other classes of active nuclei, illuminate the dense clouds forming the Broad Line Region. And indeed Zirbel et al. (zirb95 (1995)) have suggested the possibility that FR I sources produce far less UV radiation than FR II on the basis of the comparison between emission line and radio luminosities of radio galaxies. Intriguingly, the only object in which a broad line has been detected is 3C~386, whose CCC presents a much larger optical luminosity with respect to the sources with similar radio core power, possibly indicative of a thermal contribution.

## 7 Summary and conclusions

HST images of a complete sample of 33 FR I radio galaxies belonging to the 3CR catalogue have revealed that an unresolved nuclear source (Central Compact Core, CCC) is present in the great majority of these objects.

The CCC emission is found to be strongly connected with the radio core emission and anisotropic. We propose that the CCC emission can be identified with optical synchrotron radiation produced in the inner regions of a relativistic jet. Support to this possibility comes also from spectral information. These results are qualitatively consistent with the unifying model in which FR I radio galaxies are misoriented BL Lacs objects.

The identification of the CCC radiation with misoriented BL Lacs emission opens the possibility of studying this class of AGNs from a different line of sight. This can be particularly useful in understanding the jet structure and the level of the activity occurring near the central object whose emission in blazars is swamped by the highly beamed component. Further information on the nature of CCC can be inferred by simultaneous studies of radio cores and CCC optical variability which could establish whether their emission is indeed produced in the same region.

The detection of CCC indicates that we have a direct view of the innermost regions of the AGN ($`\stackrel{<}{}100R_S`$). If we restrict the analysis to objects with a total radio power of $`<2\times 10^{26}`$ W Hz<sup>-1</sup>, a CCC is found in all galaxies except three, where absorption from extended dust structures clearly plays a role. This casts serious doubts on the presence of obscuring thick tori in FR I as a whole.

Given the dominance of non-thermal emission, the CCC luminosity represents a firm upper limit to any thermal component, which translates into an optical luminosity of only $`\stackrel{<}{}10^510^7`$ times the Eddington one (for a $`10^9M_{\mathrm{}}`$ black hole). This limit on the radiative output of accreting matter is independent but consistent with those inferred in X–rays for large elliptical galaxies, thus suggesting that accretion might take place in a low efficiency radiative regime (Fabian & Rees 1995).

The picture which emerges is that the innermost structure of FR I radio galaxies differs in many crucial aspects from that of the other classes of AGN; they lack the substantial BLR, tori and thermal disc emission, which are usually associated with active nuclei. Similar studies of higher luminosity radio galaxies will be clearly crucial to determine if either a continuity between low an high luminosity sources exists or, alternatively, they represent substantially different manifestations of the accretion process onto a supermassive black hole.

###### Acknowledgements.

The authors thank G. Bodo and E. Trussoni for useful comments on the manuscript and acknowledge the Italian MURST for financial support. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.