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Resolving the Hot Dust Disk of ESO323-G77
Infrared interferometry has led to a paradigm shift in our understanding of the dusty structure in the central parsecs of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). The dust is now thought to comprise a hot (∼1000 K) equatorial disk, some of which is blown into a cooler (∼300 K) polar dusty wind by radiation pr...
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Published in: | The Astrophysical journal 2021-05, Vol.912 (2), p.96 |
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Main Authors: | , , , , , |
Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
Subjects: | |
Citations: | Items that this one cites Items that cite this one |
Online Access: | Get full text |
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Summary: | Infrared interferometry has led to a paradigm shift in our understanding of the dusty structure in the central parsecs of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). The dust is now thought to comprise a hot (∼1000 K) equatorial disk, some of which is blown into a cooler (∼300 K) polar dusty wind by radiation pressure. In this paper, we utilize the new near-IR interferometer GRAVITY on the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) to study a Type 1.2 AGNs hosted in the nearby Seyfert galaxy ESO 323-G77. By modeling the squared visibility and closure phase, we find that the hot dust is equatorially extended, consistent with the idea of a disk, and shows signs of asymmetry in the same direction. Furthermore, the data is fully consistent with the hot dust size determined by
K
-band reverberation mapping as well as the predicted size from a CAT3D-WIND model created in previous work using the spectral energy distribution of ESO 323-G77 and observations in the mid-IR from VLTI/MID-infrared Interferometric instrument). |
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ISSN: | 0004-637X 1538-4357 |
DOI: | 10.3847/1538-4357/abee80 |