Diffraction-Limited Imaging and Photometry of NGC 1068

Abstract

The nearby Seyfert 2 Galaxy NGC 1068 was observed with speckle imaging techniques in the near-infrared H-band (1.6 microns) at the Hale 200-inch Telescope and K-band (2.2 microns) at the 10 m Keck I Telescope. Images with diffraction limited or near-diffraction limited resolutions of 0.''05 - 0.''1 were obtained and used to search for structure in the nuclear region. Images of the nucleus of NGC 1068 reveal an extended region of emission which accounts for nearly 50% of the nuclear flux at K-band. This region extends 10 pc on either side of an unresolved point source nucleus which is at most, 0.''02 or 1.4 pc in size. Both the point source and the newly imaged extended emission are very red, with identical H-K colors corresponding to a color temperature of 800 K. While the point source is of a size to be consistent with grains in thermal equilibrium with the nuclear source, the extended emission is not. It must consist either of nuclear emission which has been reflected off an extended dusty disk or of small grains raised to transiently high temperatures by reflected UV photons.

accepted to AJ, AAS LaTeX and epsfig, 22 pages incl. 5 ps figures

References in corpus (4)

• Thick tori around AGN: the case for extended tori and consequences for their X-ray and IR emission
• High Resolution Mid-Infrared Imaging of the Nucleus of NGC 1068
• Strict Limits on the Ionizing Luminosity in NGC 1068 from Jet-axis Molecular Clouds
• Jet driven motions in the Narrow Line region of NGC1068

Cited by in corpus (22)

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• A Chandra X-ray Study of NGC 1068 - I. Observations of Extended Emission
• High Spatial Resolution Imaging of NGC 1068 in the Mid Infrared
• The Nature of the Nuclear H2O Masers of NGC 1068: Reverberation and Evidence for a Rotating Disk Geometry
• Hubble Space Telescope Imaging of the Circinus Galaxy
• VLTI/VINCI observations of the nucleus of NGC 1068 using the adaptive optics system MACAO
• Modeling the Nuclear Infrared Spectral Energy Distribution of Type II Active Galactic Nuclei
• A new analysis of the nucleus of NGC 1068 with MIDI observations
• Modern optical astronomy: technology and impact of interferometry
• Modeling optical and UV polarization of AGNs V. Dilution by interstellar polarization and the host galaxy
• Possible evidence for a common radial structure in nearby AGN tori
• Near-Infrared Polarimetric Adaptive Optics Observations of NGC 1068: A torus created by a hydromagnetic outflow wind
• HST NICMOS Observations of the Polarization of NGC 1068
• The Location of the Nucleus and the Morphology of Emission-Line Regions in NGC 1068
• The 3-5 micron Spectrum of NGC 1068 at High Angular Resolution: Distribution of Emission and Absorption Features across the Nuclear Continuum Source
• Nuclear Infrared Spectral Energy Distribution of Type II Active Galactic Nuclei
• N-body simulation of a clumpy torus: application to active galactic nuclei
• Extragalactic Astronomy with the VLTI: a new window on the Universe
• Chromatically modelling the parsec scale dusty structure in the centre of NGC1068