The warped nuclear disk of radio galaxy 3C 449

Among radio galaxies containing nuclear dust disks, the bipolar jet axis is generally observed to be perpendicular to the disk major axis. The FR I radio source 3C 449 is an outlier to this statistical majority, as it possesses a nearly parallel jet/disk orientation on the sky. We examine the 600 pc dusty disk in this galaxy with images from the Hubble Space Telescope. We find that a 1.6 I?m/0.7 I?m color map of the disk exhibits a twist in its isocolor contours (isochromes). We model the color map by integrating galactic starlight through an absorptive disk and find that the anomalous twist in the isochromes can be reproduced in the model with a vertically thin, warped disk.