Probing the dusty environment of the Seyfert 1 nucleus in NGC 3783 with MIDI/VLTI interferometry

Abstract

We present mid-IR spectro-interferometry of the Seyfert type 1 nucleus of NGC 3783. The dusty circumnuclear environment is spatially resolved and the wavelength dependence of the compact emission is discussed. The observations were carried out with the MIDI instrument at the Very Large Telescope Interferometer in the N-band. Spectra and visibilities were derived with a spectral resolution of 30 in the wavelength range from 8 to 13 micron. For the interpretation we developed a simple dusty disk model with small and variable covering factor. At baselines of 65 and 69 m, visibilities in the range of 0.4 to 0.7 were measured. The N-band spectra show a monotonic increase of the measured flux with wavelength with no apparent silicate feature around 10 micron. We find that the mid-IR emission from the nucleus can be reproduced by an extended dust disk or torus with a small covering factor of the radiating dust clouds. Our mid-IR observations of NGC 3783 are consistent with a clumpy circumnuclear dust environment. The interpretation in terms of a dusty torus with low covering factor supports a clumpy version of the unified scheme for AGN. The inferred sizes and luminosities are in good agreement with dust reverberation sizes and bolometric luminosities from optical and X-ray observations.

5 pages, 3 figures; letter accepted by A&A

References in corpus (5)

• Resolving the complex structure of the dust torus in the active nucleus of the Circinus galaxy
• Radiative Transfer Modeling of Three-Dimensional Clumpy AGN Tori and its Application to NGC 1068
• The innermost region of AGN tori: implications from the HST/NICMOS Type 1 point sources and near-IR reverberation
• The small dispersion of the mid IR -- hard X-ray correlation in AGN
• Probing the dusty environment of the Seyfert 1 nucleus in NGC 3783 with MIDI/VLTI interferometry

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Parsec-scale dust distributions in Seyfert galaxies - Results of the MIDI AGN snapshot survey
• Chasing obscuration in type-I AGN: discovery of an eclipsing clumpy wind at the outer broad-line region of NGC 3783
• Probing the dusty environment of the Seyfert 1 nucleus in NGC 3783 with MIDI/VLTI interferometry
• Possible evidence for a common radial structure in nearby AGN tori
• Parsec-scale obscuring accretion disk with large scale magnetic field in AGN
• Infrared Interferometry and AGNs: Parsec-scale Disks and Dusty Outflows
• The nature of obscuration in AGN: II. insights from clustering properties