The Galactic Center: Not an Active Galactic Nucleus
Abstract
We present 10 μm–35 μm Spitzer spectra of the interstellar medium in the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ), the central 210 pc × 60 pc of the Galactic center (GC). We present maps of the CMZ in ionic and H_2 emission, covering a more extensive area than earlier spectroscopic surveys in this region. The radial velocities and intensities of ionic lines and H_2 suggest that most of the H_2 0–0 S(0) emission comes from gas along the line-of-sight, as found by previous work. We compare diagnostic line ratios measured in the Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey to our data. Previous work shows that forbidden line ratios can distinguish star-forming galaxies from low-ionization nuclear emission-line regions (LINERs) and active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Our GC line ratios agree with star-forming galaxies and not with LINERs or AGNs.
Additional Information
© 2013 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2012 November 8; accepted 2013 April 30; published 2013 June 3. We thank Janet Simpson for a detailed set of comments, which greatly improved our manuscript. D.A. thanks Daniel Jaffe for useful discussions, and Daniel Dale for generously providing SINGS data used in this paper. D.A. was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (2010–0025122). This work is based on observations made with the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under a contract with NASA. Support for this work was provided by NASA through an award issued by JPL/Caltech. This research has made use of the SIMBAD database, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France.Attached Files
Published - 0067-0049_206_2_20.pdf
Submitted - 1305.0088v1.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 42344
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20131108-140731546
- National Research Foundation of Korea
- 2010–0025122
- Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (Korea)
- NASA/JPL/Caltech
- Created
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2013-11-08Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field