Far Infrared mapping of NGC 891^*

¹ Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Saupfercheckweg 1, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany e-mail: Cristina.Popescu@mpi-hd.mpg.de, Richard.Tuffs@mpi-hd.mpg.de
² Research Associate, The Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy, Str. Cuţitul de Argint 5, Bucharest, Romania
³ University of Crete, Physics Department, PO Box 2208, 710 03 Heraklion, Crete, Greece
⁴ Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas, 71110 Heraklion, Crete, Greece
⁵ NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database, 770 S. Wilson Avenue, Pasadena, California 91125, USA
⁶ The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 813 Santa Barbara Str., Pasadena, 91101 California, USA

Corresponding author: C. C. Popescu, Cristina.Popescu@mpi-hd.mpg.de

Received: 11 August 2003
Accepted: 2 October 2003

Abstract

We present deep maps of dust emission from the edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 891, obtained with the ISOPHOT instrument on board the Infrared Space Observatory in broad band filters with reference wavelengths centered on 170 and 200 m. Using new processing methods to remove the effects of detector transients from the data, we detect cold dust at high dynamic range. The observed surface brightness distribution and colour profile of the far-infrared (FIR) emission are found to be in good agreement with predictions for their counterparts derived from the model of Popescu et al. (2000a). Thus, NGC 891 is the first galaxy for which an intrinsic distribution of dust and stars could be found which simultaneously accounts for both the optical/near-IR and FIR morphologies.