Astron. Astrophys. 336, 823-828 (1998)

9. Conclusion

The use of adaptive optics has allowed to reach in the infrared the high angular resolution required to study the temperature, mass and distribution of the dust component in NGC 7469.

The mass of hot (T=900 K) dust surrounding the central source of the AGN, 0.05 , is comparable to the mass of hot dust found in another Seyfert 1 galaxy, Fairall 9, although larger than in other AGN of lower intrinsic luminosity (NGC 3783, NGC 1566, NGC 4593).

The fact that about 55% of the infrared flux arises from an unresolved core, that the dust density is as , and that its temperature decreases when dust emission originates further away from the central source, (from 900 K at r 130 pc to 300 K at r 400 pc), have been faced with current torus models. It seems that the model developped by Efstathiou & Rowan-Robinson (1995) and Efstathiou et al. (1995) gives the best agreement with our observations of NGC 7469, but further modeling is desirable.

© European Southern Observatory (ESO) 1998

Online publication: July 27, 1998
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