Issue |
A&A
Volume 560, December 2013
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A99 | |
Number of page(s) | 18 | |
Section | Extragalactic astronomy | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201322527 | |
Published online | 12 December 2013 |
Near-infrared long-slit spectra of Seyfert galaxies: gas excitation across the central kiloparsec⋆,⋆⋆,⋆⋆⋆
1 Institut de Radio, Astronomie Millimétrique (IRAM), 300 rue de la Piscine, 38406 St-Martin d’Hères, Grenoble, France
e-mail: vanderlaan@iram.fr
2 Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Königstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
3 European Space Agency, Keplerlaan 1, 2200AG Noordwijk, The Netherlands
4 Spitzer Science Center, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
Received: 22 August 2013
Accepted: 11 October 2013
Context. The excitation of the gas phase of the interstellar medium can be driven by various mechanisms. In galaxies with an active nucleus, such as Seyfert galaxies, both radiative and mechanical energy from the central black hole, or the stars in the disk surrounding it may play a role.
Aims. We investigate the relative importance and range of influence of the active galactic nucleus for the excitation of ionized and molecular gas in the central kiloparsec of its host galaxy.
Methods. We present H- and K-band long-slit spectra for a sample of 21 nearby (D < 70 Mpc) Seyfert galaxies obtained with the NIRSPEC instrument on the Keck telescope. For each galaxy, we fit the nebular line emission, stellar continua, and warm molecular gas as a function of distance from the nucleus.
Results. Our analysis does not reveal a clear difference between the nucleus proper and off-nuclear environment in terms of excitation mechanisms, suggesting that the influence of an AGN reaches far into the disk of the host galaxy. The radial variations in emission line ratios indicate that, while local mechanisms do affect the gas excitation, they are often averaged out when measuring over extended regions.
Key words: galaxies: active / galaxies: ISM / galaxies: Seyfert
The data presented herein were obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation.
Table 4 and Appendix A are available in electronic form at http://www.aanda.org
The fully calibrated long-slit spectra and fitting are only available at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/qcat?J/A+A/560/A99
© ESO, 2013
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