The Impact of the Virgo Cluster on the AGN Activity

By probing nuclear regions and overall properties of AGN hosts as a function of their environments, we aim to observationally examine how AGN activities are related to their surroundings. We have selected eight representative AGN hosts in the Virgo cluster, including seven cluster members (M49, M60, M84, M87, NGC 4435, NGC 4526, NGC 4636) and one galaxy that is likely to be background (NGC 4261) but still close enough to be studied in high resolution. The selected galaxies are located in a range of density regions showing various morphology in 1.4 GHz continuum. High resolution observations with the KVN allow us to access the inner region of the AGN without suffering from dust extinction and synchrotron self-absorption. Since half of our targets are weak to be detected at K-band within its coherence time, we applied phase referencing (fast antenna position switching) to calibrate fast atmospheric phase fluctuations. We successfully detected relatively bright AGNs, such as M87, M84 and NGC4261, but no detection signature was found to the other members of the sample. In this talk, we will present our first results from our KVN observations, while we will discuss in detail the applied technique and our immediate future plans.