A Hubble Space Telescope Survey of Extended [O III] λ5007 Å Emission in a Far-Infrared-Selected Sample of Seyfert Galaxies: Results

By H. Schmitt, J. Donley, R. Antonucci, J. Hutchings, A. Kinney, J. Pringle. 2003

156 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present the results of a Hubble Space Telescope (HST) survey of extended [O III] emission in a sample of 60 nearby Seyfert galaxies (22 Seyfert 1's and 38 Seyfert 2's), selected by mostly isotropic properties. The comparison between the semimajor axis size of their [O III] emitting regions (Rmaj) shows that Seyfert 1's and Seyfert 2's have similar distributions, which seems to contradict unified model predictions. We discuss possible ways to explain this result, which could be due to either observational limitations or the models used for the comparison with our data. We show that Seyfert 1 narrow-line regions (NLRs) are more circular and concentrated than Seyfert 2's, which can be attributed to foreshortening in the former. We find a good correlation between the NLR size and luminosity, following the relation Rmaj ∝ L([O III])0.33 ± 0.04, which is flatter than a previous one found for QSOs and Seyfert 2's. We discuss possible reasons for the different results, and their implications to photoionization models. We confirm previous results that show that the [O III] and radio emission are well aligned and also find no correlation between the orientation of the extended [O III] emission and the host galaxy major axis. This agrees with results showing that the torus axis and radio jet are not aligned with the host galaxy rotation axis, indicating that the orientation of the gas in the torus, and not the spin of the black hole, determines the orientation of the accretion disk, and consequently, the orientation of the radio jet.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fdc3c86c3d8bb8f1f537066bb0fb86e20494a45c

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Jenny E. Greene
2. Luis C. Ho
3. N. Zakamska
4. D. M. Alexander
5. A. Barth
6. Xin Liu
7. H. Netzer
8. N. Nesvadba

In Instrumentation

1. Jenny E. Greene
2. Luis C. Ho
3. N. Zakamska
4. A. Barth
5. N. Nesvadba
6. Xin Liu
7. Guilin Liu
8. Kevin Schawinski

Citations in the corpus

• DUST IN THE POLAR REGION AS A MAJOR CONTRIBUTOR TO THE INFRARED EMISSION OF ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI (2013, background): “Additionally the [O III] emission appears as only marginally extended (Schmitt et al. 2003).”
• FEEDBACK IN LUMINOUS OBSCURED QUASARS (2011, methodology): “We include the Bennert et al. (2002) and Schmitt et al. (2003) measurements in Fig.”
• A New Sample of Low-Mass Black Holes in Active Galaxies (2007, background): “If observed correlations between NLR size and AGN luminosity (e.g., Bennert et al. 2002; Schmitt et al. 2003) are extrapolated to the highest luminosities, then one would predict unbound nebulosities; Netzer et al. (2004) suppose that the NLRs in these systems grew so large that they were no longer…”
• Active galactic nuclei flicker: an observational estimate of the duration of black hole growth phases of ∼105 yr (2015, background): “What do observations show that the NLRs of luminous AGN are large and at least on scales of several kpc (e.g. Schmitt et al. 2003).”
• Size and properties of the narrow-line region in Seyfert-1 galaxies from spatially-resolved optical spectroscopy (2006, methodology): “This discrepancy is explained by Schmitt et al. (2003) by the limited field-of-view of the linear-ramp filter (∼13′′), but can also be due to less sensitivity of the 800 s exposure taken with the 2.4 m HST mirror compared to the 900 s exposure using the 4 m CTIO telescope.”
• Quasar feedback and the origin of radio emission in radio-quiet quasars (2014, background): “In large unbiased samples the alignment between jets and ionized gas is statistically weak at best (Privon et al. 2008), although some authors find a stronger relationship (Schmitt et al. 2003), especially in compact radio sources (Shih et al. 2013).”
• REVERBERATION MEASUREMENTS OF THE INNER RADIUS OF THE DUST TORUS IN 17 SEYFERT GALAXIES (2014, methodology): “The flux of [O III]λ5007 was compiled from previous research (Boroson & Meyers 1992; Whittle 1992; Kaspi et al. 1996; Marziani et al. 2003; Schmitt et al. 2003; Kaspi et al. 2005), and the flux of [O III]λ4959 was calculated by assuming a theoretical line ratio of [O III]λ5007/[O III]λ4959 = 3.01…”
• Observations of feedback from radio-quiet quasars - I. Extents and morphologies of ionized gas nebulae (2013, methodology): “HST narrow-band imaging campaigns (Schmitt et al. 2003; Bennert et al. 2002) are included in the figure (represented by gray symbols) but are not used in any quantitative measurements, because they are shallower than IFU and long-slit spectroscopy by 1–2 orders of magnitude and thus do not reach…”
• On the X-ray, optical emission line and black hole mass properties of local Seyfert galaxies ! (2006, methodology): “It has been shown in the literature that the distribution of [OIII]λ5007 flux is similar in both types of Seyfert (Mulchaey et al. 1994); also the NLR size determined from HST data is similar in type 1 and type 2 Seyferts (Schmitt et al. 2003).”
• The soft X-ray/NLR connection: a single photoionized medium? (2005, methodology): “The complete Schmitt et al. (2003a) catalog is selected on the basis of 60µm luminosities and warm 25/60µm colors, in order to avoid starburst galaxies and orientation biases, and includes only Seyfert galaxies withz < 0.031.”