The Astrophysical Journal Letters (Jan 2023)
GOALS-JWST: NIRCam and MIRI Imaging of the Circumnuclear Starburst Ring in NGC 7469
- Thomas Bohn,
- Hanae Inami,
- Tanio Diaz-Santos,
- Lee Armus,
- S. T. Linden,
- Vivian U,
- Jason Surace,
- Kirsten L. Larson,
- Aaron S. Evans,
- Shunshi Hoshioka,
- Thomas Lai,
- Yiqing Song,
- Joseph M. Mazzarella,
- Loreto Barcos-Munoz,
- Vassilis Charmandaris,
- Justin H. Howell,
- Anne M. Medling,
- George C. Privon,
- Jeffrey A. Rich,
- Sabrina Stierwalt,
- Susanne Aalto,
- Torsten Böker,
- Michael J. I. Brown,
- Kazushi Iwasawa,
- Matthew A. Malkan,
- Paul P. van der Werf,
- Philip Appleton,
- Christopher C. Hayward,
- Francisca Kemper,
- David Law,
- Jason Marshall,
- Eric J. Murphy,
- David Sanders
Affiliations
- Thomas Bohn
- ORCiD
- Hiroshima Astrophysical Science Center, Hiroshima University , 1-3-1 Kagamiyama, Higashi-Hiroshima, Hiroshima 739-8526, Japan ; [email protected]
- Hanae Inami
- ORCiD
- Hiroshima Astrophysical Science Center, Hiroshima University , 1-3-1 Kagamiyama, Higashi-Hiroshima, Hiroshima 739-8526, Japan ; [email protected]
- Tanio Diaz-Santos
- ORCiD
- Institute of Astrophysics , Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH), Heraklion, 70013, Greece; School of Sciences, European University Cyprus , Diogenes street, Engomi, 1516 Nicosia, Cyprus
- Lee Armus
- ORCiD
- IPAC, California Institute of Technology , 1200 E. California Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
- S. T. Linden
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy, University of Massachusetts at Amherst , Amherst, MA 01003, USA
- Vivian U
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, 4129 Frederick Reines Hall, University of California , Irvine, CA 92697, USA
- Jason Surace
- ORCiD
- IPAC, California Institute of Technology , 1200 E. California Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
- Kirsten L. Larson
- ORCiD
- AURA for the European Space Agency (ESA), Space Telescope Science Institute , 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Aaron S. Evans
- ORCiD
- National Radio Astronomy Observatory , 520 Edgemont Road, Charlottesville, VA 22903, USA; Department of Astronomy, University of Virginia , 530 McCormick Road, Charlottesville, VA 22903, USA
- Shunshi Hoshioka
- Hiroshima Astrophysical Science Center, Hiroshima University , 1-3-1 Kagamiyama, Higashi-Hiroshima, Hiroshima 739-8526, Japan ; [email protected]
- Thomas Lai
- ORCiD
- IPAC, California Institute of Technology , 1200 E. California Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
- Yiqing Song
- ORCiD
- National Radio Astronomy Observatory , 520 Edgemont Road, Charlottesville, VA 22903, USA; Department of Astronomy, University of Virginia , 530 McCormick Road, Charlottesville, VA 22903, USA
- Joseph M. Mazzarella
- ORCiD
- IPAC, California Institute of Technology , 1200 E. California Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
- Loreto Barcos-Munoz
- ORCiD
- National Radio Astronomy Observatory , 520 Edgemont Road, Charlottesville, VA 22903, USA; Department of Astronomy, University of Virginia , 530 McCormick Road, Charlottesville, VA 22903, USA
- Vassilis Charmandaris
- ORCiD
- Institute of Astrophysics , Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH), Heraklion, 70013, Greece; School of Sciences, European University Cyprus , Diogenes street, Engomi, 1516 Nicosia, Cyprus; Department of Physics, University of Crete , Heraklion, 71003, Greece
- Justin H. Howell
- ORCiD
- IPAC, California Institute of Technology , 1200 E. California Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
- Anne M. Medling
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics & Astronomy and Ritter Astrophysical Research Center, University of Toledo , Toledo, OH 43606, USA; ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) ; Australia
- George C. Privon
- ORCiD
- National Radio Astronomy Observatory , 520 Edgemont Road, Charlottesville, VA 22903, USA; Department of Astronomy, University of Florida , P.O. Box 112055, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA
- Jeffrey A. Rich
- ORCiD
- The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science , 813 Santa Barbara Street, Pasadena, CA 91101, USA
- Sabrina Stierwalt
- ORCiD
- Occidental College , Physics Department, 1600 Campus Road, Los Angeles, CA 90042, USA
- Susanne Aalto
- ORCiD
- Department of Space, Earth and Environment, Chalmers University of Technology , SE-412 96 Gothenburg, Sweden
- Torsten Böker
- ORCiD
- European Space Agency, Space Telescope Science Institute , Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Michael J. I. Brown
- ORCiD
- School of Physics & Astronomy, Monash University , Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia
- Kazushi Iwasawa
- ORCiD
- Institut de Ciències del Cosmos (ICCUB), Universitat de Barcelona (IEEC-UB) , Martí i Franquès, 1, E-08028 Barcelona, Spain; ICREA , Pg. Lluís Companys 23, E-08010 Barcelona, Spain
- Matthew A. Malkan
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics & Astronomy, UCLA , Los Angeles, CA 90095-1547, USA
- Paul P. van der Werf
- ORCiD
- Leiden Observatory, Leiden University , PO Box 9513, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
- Philip Appleton
- ORCiD
- IPAC, California Institute of Technology , 1200 E. California Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
- Christopher C. Hayward
- ORCiD
- Center for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute , 162 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA
- Francisca Kemper
- ORCiD
- ICREA , Pg. Lluís Companys 23, E-08010 Barcelona, Spain; Institut de Ciencies de l’Espai (ICE, CSIC) , Can Magrans, s/n, E-08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain; Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (IEEC) , E-08034 Barcelona, Spain
- David Law
- ORCiD
- Space Telescope Science Institute , 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Jason Marshall
- ORCiD
- Glendale Community College , 1500 N. Verdugo Road, Glendale, CA 91208, USA
- Eric J. Murphy
- ORCiD
- National Radio Astronomy Observatory , 520 Edgemont Road, Charlottesville, VA 22903, USA
- David Sanders
- ORCiD
- Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii , 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/acab61
- Journal volume & issue
-
Vol. 942,
no. 2
p. L36
Abstract
We present James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) imaging of NGC 7469 with the Near-Infrared Camera and the Mid-InfraRed Instrument. NGC 7469 is a nearby, z = 0.01627, luminous infrared galaxy that hosts both a Seyfert Type-1.5 nucleus and a circumnuclear starburst ring with a radius of ∼0.5 kpc. The new near-infrared (NIR) JWST imaging reveals 66 star-forming regions, 37 of which were not detected by Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations. Twenty-eight of the 37 sources have very red NIR colors that indicate obscurations up to A _v ∼ 7 and a contribution of at least 25% from hot dust emission to the 4.4 μ m band. Their NIR colors are also consistent with young (<5 Myr) stellar populations and more than half of them are coincident with the mid-infrared (MIR) emission peaks. These younger, dusty star-forming regions account for ∼6% and ∼17% of the total 1.5 and 4.4 μ m luminosity of the starburst ring, respectively. Thanks to JWST, we find a significant number of young dusty sources that were previously unseen due to dust extinction. The newly identified 28 young sources are a significant increase compared to the number of HST-detected young sources (4–5). This makes the total percentage of the young population rise from ∼15% to 48%. These results illustrate the effectiveness of JWST in identifying and characterizing previously hidden star formation in the densest star-forming environments around active galactic nuclei (AGN).
Keywords
