AAS 207th Meeting, 8-12 January 2006
Session 63 From Here to Eternity: The Spitzer Legacy Programs
Poster, Tuesday, 9:20am-6:30pm, January 10, 2006, Exhibit Hall

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[63.15] Mid-Infrared Properties, Excitation Mechanisms, and AGN Content of LINERs--An IRS Survey

D. S. Rupke (Maryland), E. Sturm, R. Genzel, D. Lutz, A. Contursi, M. Lehnert, L. Tacconi, M. Schweitzer (MPE), S. Veilleux, D.-C. Kim (Maryland), H. Netzer, A. Sternberg, D. Maoz (Tel Aviv), D. B. Sanders (IfA), S. Lord, J. Mazzarella (IPAC)

Low-ionization nuclear emission-line regions (LINERs) occur in a significant fraction of large galaxies, but their nature and their relation to AGN is still a puzzle. In this contribution, we present preliminary results from recently completed Spitzer observations of 36 LINERs using the Infrared Spectrograph. Our sample is subdivided into (1) nuclear, optically- or X-ray-selected LINERs and (2) extended, infrared-selected LINERs, in order to study the roles played by star formation, AGN, and shocks in exciting the gas. We are especially interested in understanding which LINERs are predominantly AGN-powered, and how these low-luminosity AGN compare to more luminous Seyferts. Studying LINERs in detail with Spitzer at low redshift provides a fundamental dataset for a better understanding of the high-redshift LINER population.


The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: drupke@astro.umd.edu

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