GOALS-JWST: Mid-infrared Spectroscopy of the Nucleus of NGC 7469

Creators: Armus, L.; Lai, T.; U, V.; Larson, K. L.; Díaz-Santos, T.; Evans, A. S.; Malkan, M. A.; Rich, J.; Medling, A. M.; Law, D. R.; Inami, H.; Müller-Sánchez, F.; Charmandaris, V.; van der Werf, P.; Stierwalt, S.; Linden, S. T.; Privon, G. C.; Barcos-Muñoz, L.; Hayward, C. C.; Song, Y.; Appleton, P.; Aalto, S.; Bohn, T.; Böker, T.; Brown, M. J. I.; Finnerty, L.; Howell, J.; Iwasawa, K.; Kemper, F.; Marshall, J. A.; Mazzarella, J. M.; McKinney, J.; Murphy, E. J.; Sanders, D. B.; Surace, J.

Abstract

We present mid-infrared spectroscopic observations of the nucleus of the nearby Seyfert galaxy NGC 7469 taken with the MIRI instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) as part of Directors Discretionary Time Early Release Science program 1328. The high-resolution nuclear spectrum contains 19 emission lines covering a wide range of ionization. The high-ionization lines show broad, blueshifted emission reaching velocities up to 1700 km s⁻¹ and FWHM ranging from ∼500 to 1100 km s⁻¹. The width of the broad emission and the broad-to-narrow line flux ratios correlate with ionization potential. The results suggest a decelerating, stratified, AGN-driven outflow emerging from the nucleus. The estimated mass outflow rate is 1–2 orders of magnitude larger than the current black hole accretion rate needed to power the AGN. Eight pure rotational H₂ emission lines are detected with intrinsic widths ranging from FWHM ∼125 to 330 km s⁻¹. We estimate a total mass of warm H₂ gas of ∼1.2 × 10⁷ M_⊙ in the central 100 pc. The PAH features are extremely weak in the nuclear spectrum, but a 6.2 μm PAH feature with an equivalent width of ∼0.07 μm and a flux of 2.7 × 10⁻¹⁷ W m⁻² is detected. The spectrum is steeply rising in the mid-infrared, with a silicate strength of ∼0.02, significantly smaller than seen in most PG QSOs but comparable to other Seyfert 1s. These early MIRI mid-infrared IFU data highlight the power of JWST to probe the multiphase interstellar media surrounding actively accreting supermassive black holes.

Additional Information

© 2023. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. This work is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA/CSA JWST. The research was supported by NASA grant JWST-ERS-01328. The data were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-03127 for JWST. The observations can be accessed via https://doi.org/10.17909/0fe2-cf33. V.U. acknowledges funding support from NASA Astrophysics Data Analysis Program (ADAP) grant 80NSSC20K0450. The Flatiron Institute is supported by the Simons Foundation. A.M.M. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation under grant No. 2009416. A.S.E. and S.L. acknowledge support from NASA grant HST-GO15472. H.I. and T.B. acknowledge support from JSPS KAKENHI grant No. JP21H01129 and the Ito Foundation for Promotion of Science. Y.S. was funded in part by the NSF through the Grote Reber Fellowship Program administered by Associated Universities, Inc./National Radio Astronomy Observatory. F.M.-S. acknowledges support from NASA through ADAP award 80NSSC19K1096. S.A. gratefully acknowledges support from ERC Advanced grant 789410, the Swedish Research Council, and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg (KAW) Foundation. K.I. acknowledges support by the Spanish MCIN under grant PID2019-105510GB-C33/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. This work was also partly supported by the Spanish program Unidad de Excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2020-001058-M, financed by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. The authors would also like to thank an anonymous referee whose comments improved the quality and clarity of this paper.

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