AAS Meeting #193 - Austin, Texas, January 1999
Session 6. Nearby AGN I - Dust, Gas, Obscuration and Fuelling
Display, Wednesday, January 6, 1999, 9:20am-6:30pm, Exhibit Hall 1

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[6.03] Mid-IR Imaging of Nearby AGN on Sub-NLR Scales

B. Grossan (UC Berkeley Center for Particle Astrophysics), M. W. Werner (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

We present preliminary results of our program of mid-IR observations of the nuclei of the nearest active galaxies (AGN). The Unified Model of AGN and quasars is based on the presence of a dust toroid between the broad (BLR) and narrow line (NLR) emission regions, roughly on scales < 100 pc. With the same central continuum source, different orientations of the viewer to the toroid produce different observed AGN classes. Other models feature different dust structures, for example patchy dust. The high-resolution MIRLIN mid-IR camera can measure the spatial extent of dust emission, and can resolve significant ellipticity (as expected for emission from a torus near edge-on to the observer) of structures 50 pc in size in objects up to 7 Mpc away. In our first efforts, we observed the nucleus of M81 with ~0.45" resolution on a 20" field. Preliminary analysis at press time suggests a circular region of bright, extended emission out to 2.25" in radius, a diameter of roughly 75 pc at the source. Our presentation will focus on the nature and distribution of this emission. We will also give details of our ongoing program of observations of a sample of nearby AGN with MIRLIN.


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