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Infrared Emission from Spiral Galaxy Nuclei

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 March 2016

C. G. Wynn-Williams
C. G. Wynn-Williams*
Affiliation:
Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii

Extract

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At the present time we do not know with any certainty what the infrared properties of “normal” galaxies are, although we do know that substantial broad-band emission at 10μm is fairly common in spiral galaxies; Rieke and Lebofsky (1978), for example, were able to detect the nuclei of 16 out of 39 bright spiral galaxies above a level of about 50 mJy. Only one of these, NGC 1068, is a Seyfert Galaxy.

With the exception of M31, whose 10μm emission can be accounted for entirely by stellar photospheric emission, all the spiral galaxies detected in Rieke and Lebofsky’s survey show strong emission from heated dust grains. Airborne observations at longer wavelengths (e.g., Telesco and Harper 1980) of a few of these galaxies show a peak in the energy distribution at around 80μm, corresponding to dust temperatures of order 30-60K, while spatial scans, and multi-aperture photometry at 10μm (Rieke 1976; Becklin, Fomalont, and Neugebauer 1973; Becklin et al. 1980) indicate a physical size for the emitting region of a few hundred parsecs diameter.

Type
Joint Discussion
Information
Highlights of Astronomy , Volume 5: Highlights of Astronomy. As presented at the XVIIth General Assembly of the IAU, 1979 , 1980 , pp. 173 - 175
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

References

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