Bibcode
Perez Garcia, A. M.; Rodríguez Espinosa, J. M.
Referencia bibliográfica
"IX Latin American Regional IAU Meeting, "Focal Points in Latin American Astronomy", held in Tonantzintla, Mexico, Nov 9-13, 1998, Eds: Aguilar, A.; Carraminana, A.; to be printed in Revista Mexicana de Astronomia y Astrofisica Serie de Conferencias."
Fecha de publicación:
11
1998
Número de citas
0
Número de citas referidas
0
Descripción
The study of the IR emission from Seyfert galaxies is of key importance
for understanding the origin of the extraordinary nuclear activity seen
in these objects as well as the differences between the various Seyfert
types. Two important problems remain unresolved. For instance, whether
the IR radiation from Seyfert galaxies is of mostly thermal or
non-thermal origin has been a matter of debate. This work presents data
from the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) of a complete set of Seyfert
galaxies in a wavelength range seldom explored so far. These data allow
a detailed study of the far IR Spectral Energy Distribution of these
sources. A Bayesian inversion method has been used to invert the
Spectral Energy Distributions (SED) of these sources yielding two
fundamental results, namely that the far IR SED of Seyfert Galaxies can
be explained solely through thermal reradiation of high energy photons
by dust. And, that this thermal emission is made up of two or three
independent components, a warm, a cold, and a very cold dust component.
These thermal components have been readily explained as produced by warm
dust heated by either the active nucleus or by circumnuclear starbursts,
cold dust heated by star forming region in the galaxy disk, and very
cold dust heated by the general interstellar radiation field,
respectively. Comparisons have been made between the parameters (fluxes,
temperatures, luminosities, etc.) obtained from the analysis of the IR
SEDs and the emission in other wavelength ranges (radio and X-rays). The
host galaxies have proven once more to be key elements in the
understanding of the Seyfert phenomenon. Besides, the nuclear properties
seem to be adequately explained with the Unified Models of AGN, that
state that the differences seen between the broad (Seyfert 1) and narrow
(Seyfert 2) lines objects are due to geometrical orientation effects.