Berlin 2005 – scientific programme

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EP: Extraterrestrische Physik

EP 20: Poster-Session III: Astrophysik

EP 20.7: Poster

Tuesday, March 8, 2005, 09:00–19:00, Poster TU BH

Infrared interferometry of AGN: present interferometric results and future goals — •Gerd Weigelt¹, Thomas Beckert¹, Karl-Heinz Hofmann¹, Dieter Schertl¹, and Markus Wittkowski² — ¹MPI for Radioastronomy — ²European Southern Observatory

Bispectrum speckle interferometry studies (Wittkowski et al., 1998; Weigelt et al., 2004) of NGC 1068 with the SAO 6 m telescope allowed the reconstruction of a diffraction-limited K’-band image with 74 mas resolution and the first H-band image with 57 mas resolution. The compact core has a north-western, tail-shaped extension. The K’-band FWHM diameter of this compact core is 18 x 39 mas (+/- 4 mas) or 1.3 x 2.8 pc, and the P.A. of the north-western extension is -16 degree. This suggests that the NIR emission from the compact core is both thermal emission and scattered light from dust near the western wall of a low-density, conical cavity or from the innermost region of a parsec-scale dusty torus that is heated by the central source. First long-baseline interferometry of NGC 1068 in the near-infrared K band (Wittkowski et al., 2004) and in the mid-infrared (Jaffe et al., 2004) have been carried out with ESO’s VLT Interferometer.