A mid-infrared exploration of the dusty environments of active galactic nuclei

Abstract

We present the first results from a mid-infrared survey of local Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) using the CanariCam (CC) instrument on the 10.4m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC). We are obtaining sub-arcsecond angular resolution (0.3-0.6 arcsec) mid-IR imaging and spectroscopic observations of a sample of 100 local AGN, which are complemented with data taken with T-ReCS, VISIR, and Michelle. The full sample contains approximately 140 AGN, covers nearly six orders of magnitude in AGN luminosity, and includes low-luminosity AGN (LLAGN), Seyfert 1s and 2s, QSO, radio galaxies, and (U)LIRGs. The main goals of this project are: (1) to test whether the properties of the dusty tori of the AGN Unified Model depend on the AGN type, (2) to study the nuclear star formation activity and obscuration of local AGN, and (3) to explore the role of the dusty torus in LLAGN.

Conference proceedings of IAU Symposium 304: Multiwavelength AGN surveys and studies

References in corpus (5)

• Nuclear star formation activity and black hole accretion in nearby Seyfert galaxies
• The Infrared Nuclear Emission of Seyfert Galaxies on Parsec Scales: Testing the Clumpy Torus models
• The Effect of Active Galactic Nuclei on the Mid-Infrared Aromatic Features
• Gemini Mid-IR Polarimetry of NGC1068: Polarized Structures Around the Nucleus
• Uncovering the deeply embedded AGN activity in the nuclear regions of the interacting galaxy Arp299