N‐Band Imaging of Seyfert Nuclei and the Mid‐Infrared–X‐Ray Correlation

Abstract

We present new mid-infrared (N-band) images of a sample of eight nearby Seyfert galaxies. In all of our targets, we detect a central unresolved source, which in some cases has been identified for the first time. In particular, we have detected the mid-infrared emission from the active nucleus of NGC 4945, which previously remained undetected at any wavelength but hard X-rays. We also detect circumnuclear extended emission in the Circinus galaxy along its major axis and find marginal evidence for extended circumnuclear emission in NGC 3281. The high spatial resolution (17) of our data allows us to separate the flux of the nuclear point sources from the extended circumnuclear starburst (if present). We complement our sample with literature data for a number of nonactive starburst galaxies and relate the nuclear N-band flux to published hard (2-10 keV) X-ray fluxes. We find tight and well-separated correlations between the nuclear N-band flux and X-ray flux for both Seyfert and starburst nuclei that span over 3 orders of magnitude in luminosity. We demonstrate that these correlations can be used as a powerful classification tool for galactic nuclei. For example, we find strong evidence against NGC 1808 currently harboring an active Seyfert nucleus based on its position in the mid-infrared-X-ray diagram. On the other hand, we confirm that NGC 4945 is in fact a Seyfert 2 galaxy.