The Multitude of Unresolved Continuum Sources at 1.6 microns in Hubble Space Telescope images of Seyfert Galaxies

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  • 26 June 2000
Abstract
We examine 112 Seyfert galaxies observed by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) at 1.6 microns. We find that ~50% of the Seyfert 2.0 galaxies which are part of the Revised Shapeley-Ames (RSA) Catalog or the CfA redshift sample contain unresolved continuum sources at 1.6 microns. All but a couple of the Seyfert 1.0--1.9 galaxies display unresolved continuum sources. The unresolved sources have fluxes of order a mJy, near-infrared luminosities of order 10^41 erg/s and absolute magnitudes M_H ~ -16. Comparison non-Seyfert galaxies from the RSA Catalog display significantly fewer (~20%), somewhat lower luminosity nuclear sources, which could be due to compact star clusters. We find that the luminosities of the unresolved Seyfert 1.0-1.9 sources at 1.6 micron are correlated with [OIII] 5007A and hard X-ray luminosities, implying that these sources are non-stellar. Assuming a spectral energy distribution similar to that of a Seyfert 2 galaxy, we estimate that a few percent of local spiral galaxies contain black holes emitting as Seyferts at a moderate fraction, \~10^-1 to 10^-4, of their Eddington luminosities. We find no strong correlation between 1.6 micron fluxes and hard X-ray or [OIII] fluxes for the pure Seyfert 2.0 galaxies. With increasing Seyfert type the fraction of unresolved sources detected at 1.6 micron and the ratio of 1.6 micron to [OIII] fluxes tend to decrease. These trends are consistent with the unification model for Seyfert 1 and 2 galaxies.

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