VLA/VLBA obscured radio-loud active galactic nuclei

Based on possessing compact components with high flux densities, 60 of these sources are good candidates for absorption-line searches. Twenty-seven sources were observed for H I 21 cm absorption at their photometric or spectroscopic redshifts with only six detections (five definite and one tentative). However, five of these were from a small subset of six CSOs with pure galaxy optical/NIR spectra (i.e., any AGN emission is obscured) and for which accurate spectroscopic redshifts place the redshifted 21 cm line in a radio frequency intereference (RFI)-free spectral "window" (i.e., the percentage of H I 21 cm absorption-line detections could be as high as ~90% in this sample).

It is likely that the presence of ubiquitous RFI and the absence of accurate spectroscopic redshifts preclude H I detections in similar sources (only 1 detection out of the remaining 22 sources observed, 13 of which have only photometric redshifts); that is, H I absorption may well be present but is masked by the RFI. Future searches for highly redshifted H I and molecular absorption can easily find more distant CSOs among bright, "blank field" radio sources, but will be severely hampered by an inability to determine accurate spectroscopic redshifts due to their lack of rest-frame UV continuum.