Daily Image
16-11-2007
Meni MIDI Mici
| Submitter: | Walter Jaffe |
| Description: | The bottom image shows a representation of the "obscuring torus" of the Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC 1068 observed with the MidInfrareDInterferometer (MIDI) at ESO's VLTI, Paranal, Chile. VLTI is the mode of the VLT in which 2 or more of its giant optical telescopes work together as an interferometer. Just like with the WSRT, this reveals much finer details than a single telescope could. MIDI was built by MPIA, Heidelberg with major contributions from ASTRON. The top left image is an HST image showing the ionization cone extending to the North of the AGN. Top right is a VLBI image (Gallimore et al 2004) showing the radio jet to the North-East. The bottom image shows a pink elliptical disk representing hot dust (~600 K) imaged by MIDI at 8 microns wavelength with a resolution of 10 milliarcsec (~0.5 pc). The disk is, surprisingly, neither perpendicular nor parallel to the jet but tilted, and is coincident with water maser emission (colored dots). It is seems to surround the area of free-free emission from the core of the AGN (contours). The warm dust is probably the hot throat region of a more extended dust structure. The blue ring represents the outer contour of emission from cooler dust (~300 K, room temperature) seen at 13 microns by MIDI. |
| Copyright: | MIDI |
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