Infrared Space Observatory Long Wavelength Spectrometer Observations of the Interacting Galaxy System Arp 299

Session 21 - Luminous Infrared Galaxies.
Display session, Wednesday, January 07
Exhibit Hall,

[21.06] Infrared Space Observatory Long Wavelength Spectrometer Observations of the Interacting Galaxy System Arp 299

S. Satyapal, M. A. Greenhouse (NASA/GSFC), M. Luhman, J. Fischer, H. A. Smith (NRL)

We present Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) Long Wavelength Spectrometer (LWS) and ground-based near-infrared Fabry-Perot imaging observations of the interacting galaxy system Arp 299. Our observations can be explained entirely by a starburst model for this galaxy system. The putative active galactic nucleus (AGN) in source A does not dominate the properties of this source: we see no evidence of broad recombination lines; (2)strong 3.29 \mum dust feature emission, known to be absent or weak in AGN, is detected from this source, and; (3) the LWS fine structure line ratios can be explained entirely by a simple starburst model. Stellar evolutionary synthesis codes are coupled with the photoionization code, CLOUDY (Ferland 1993) to derive parameters for the starburst, such as the age, initial mass function, and luminosity. Recent photodissociation region codes (Kauffman et al. 1997) are coupled with CLOUDY to self-consistently model all LWS fine structure lines.

Program listing for Wednesday