GOALS-JWST: NIRCam and MIRI Imaging of the Circumnuclear Starburst Ring in NGC 7469

Abstract

We present James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) imaging of NGC 7469 with the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and the Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI). NGC 7469 is a nearby, $z=0.01627$, luminous infrared galaxy (LIRG) that hosts both a Seyfert Type-1.5 nucleus and a circumnuclear starburst ring with a radius of $\sim$0.5 kpc. The new near-infrared (NIR) JWST imaging reveals 66 star-forming regions, 37 of which were not detected by HST observations. Twenty-eight of the 37 sources have very red NIR colors that indicate obscurations up to A${}_{\mathrm{v}}\sim 7$ and a contribution of at least 25$\%$ from hot dust emission to the 4.4$\mu$m band. Their NIR colors are also consistent with young ($<$5 Myr) stellar populations and more than half of them are coincident with the MIR emission peaks. These younger, dusty star-forming regions account for $\sim$6$\%$ and $\sim$17$\%$ of the total 1.5$\mu$m and 4.4$\mu$m luminosity of the starburst ring, respectively. Thanks to JWST, we find a significant number of young dusty sources that were previously unseen due to dust extinction. The newly identified 28 young sources are a significant increase compared to the number of HST-detected young sources (4-5). This makes the total percentage of the young population rise from $\sim$15$\%$ to 48$\%$. These results illustrate the effectiveness of JWST in identifying and characterizing previously hidden star formation in the densest star-forming environments around AGN.

4 figures, 1 table, Accepted by ApJL

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• The James Webb Space Telescope Mission
• GOALS-JWST: Gas Dynamics and Excitation in NGC7469 revealed by NIRSpec
• Clumpy star formation and an obscured nuclear starburst in the luminous dusty z=4 galaxy GN20 seen by MIRI/JWST
• PDRs4All VII. The 3.3 $\mu$m aromatic infrared band as a tracer of physical properties of the ISM in galaxies
• Core Revelations: the Star Formation and AGN Connection at the Heart of NGC 7469
• Investigating starburst-driven neutrino emission from galaxies in the Great Observatories All-Sky LIRG Survey