HST, RADIO AND INFRARED OBSERVATIONS OF 28 3CR RADIO GALAXIES AT REDSHIFT Z-SIMILAR-TO-1 - I - THE OBSERVATIONS

Hubble Space Telescope images are presented of a sample of 28 3CR radi o galaxies with redshifts in the range 0.6 < z < 1.8, together with ma ps at comparable angular resolution of their radio structure, taken us ing the Very Large Array. Infrared images of the fields, taken with th e United Kingdom InfraRed Telescope, are also presented, The optical i mages display a spectacular range of structures. Many of the galaxies show highly elongated optical emission aligned along the directions of the radio axes, but this is not a universal effect: a small number of sources are either symmetrical or misaligned, Amongst those sources t hat do show an alignment effect, the morphology of the optical emissio n varies greatly, from a single bright elongated emission region to st rings of optical knots stretching from one radio hotspot to the other, The infrared images display much less complexity. Although their sign ificantly lower angular resolution would wash out some of the smaller structures seen in the HST images, it is clear that these galaxies are less aligned at infrared wavelengths than in the optical. In this pap er, we discuss the galaxies individually, but defer a statistical anal ysis of the multi-waveband properties of the complete sample of source s to later papers in this series.