Towards a new paradigm of dust structure in AGN: Dissecting the mid-IR emission of Circinus galaxy
Towards a new paradigm of dust structure in AGN: Dissecting the mid-IR emission of Circinus galaxy
Recent mid-infrared (MIR) observations of nearby active galactic nuclei (AGN), revealed that their dust emission appears prominently extended in the polar direction, at odds with the expectations from the canonical dusty torus. This polar dust, tentatively associated with dusty winds driven by radiation pressure, is found to have a major contribution to the MIR flux from a few to hundreds of parsecs. One such source with a clear detection of polar dust is a nearby, well-known AGN in the Circinus galaxy. We proposed a phenomenological model consisting of a compact, thin dusty disk and a large-scale polar outflow in the form of a hyperboloid shell and demonstrated that such a model is able to explain the peculiar MIR morphology on large scales seen by VLT/VISIR and the interferometric data from VLTI/MIDI that probe the small scales. Our results call for caution when attributing dust emission of unresolved sources entirely to the torus and warrant further investigation of the MIR emission in the polar regions of AGN.
50-55
Stalevski, Marko
6f6b37b3-7a57-4024-b190-a2ea2d538051
Asmus, Daniel
f783516a-c74c-4912-b68e-4e896e4317b2
Tristram, Konrad R. W.
37fab926-5cfc-4c23-8f75-52fafaa518b6
1 October 2019
Stalevski, Marko
6f6b37b3-7a57-4024-b190-a2ea2d538051
Asmus, Daniel
f783516a-c74c-4912-b68e-4e896e4317b2
Tristram, Konrad R. W.
37fab926-5cfc-4c23-8f75-52fafaa518b6
Stalevski, Marko, Asmus, Daniel and Tristram, Konrad R. W.
(2019)
Towards a new paradigm of dust structure in AGN: Dissecting the mid-IR emission of Circinus galaxy.
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union, 15 (S356), .
(doi:10.1017/S1743921320002562).
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Meeting abstract
Abstract
Recent mid-infrared (MIR) observations of nearby active galactic nuclei (AGN), revealed that their dust emission appears prominently extended in the polar direction, at odds with the expectations from the canonical dusty torus. This polar dust, tentatively associated with dusty winds driven by radiation pressure, is found to have a major contribution to the MIR flux from a few to hundreds of parsecs. One such source with a clear detection of polar dust is a nearby, well-known AGN in the Circinus galaxy. We proposed a phenomenological model consisting of a compact, thin dusty disk and a large-scale polar outflow in the form of a hyperboloid shell and demonstrated that such a model is able to explain the peculiar MIR morphology on large scales seen by VLT/VISIR and the interferometric data from VLTI/MIDI that probe the small scales. Our results call for caution when attributing dust emission of unresolved sources entirely to the torus and warrant further investigation of the MIR emission in the polar regions of AGN.
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Published date: 1 October 2019
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 447420
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/447420
ISSN: 1743-9213
PURE UUID: a6d35d54-a073-48ea-a58b-dd2de210d514
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Date deposited: 11 Mar 2021 17:30
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 11:16
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Contributors
Author:
Marko Stalevski
Author:
Daniel Asmus
Author:
Konrad R. W. Tristram
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