Vivian U

Our #JWST #GOALS paper on the circumnuclear gas dynamics in #NGC7469 just got published in ApJL!

https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ac961c

Here's the press release from #UCINews, but more interestingly, here's a brief thread about the paper itself - 1/

https://news.uci.edu/2022/11/14/uci-led-astronomers-capitalize-on-early-access-to-james-webb-space-telescope-data/

#Astrodon

Nov 14, 2022 at 8:21pmWeb
Show threadVivian UNov 14, 2022
NGC 7469 (S) is a nearby infrared-luminous #Seyfert that hosts a circumnuclear star-forming ring around its active supermassive black hole, so it's ideal for studying the starburst-AGN connection in detail. In this paper we focus on the gas in the inner (600pc) interstellar medium region. 2/
Show threadVivian UNov 14, 2022
The #JWST #MRS Ch 1 wavelength range (4.9 - 7.7 micron) covers many key diagnostic features for shock excitation ([Fe II], H2), strength of the radiation field ([Ar II]), and coronal region ([Mg V]) at the highest spatial resolution afforded by MRS (~0.3"). 3/
Show threadVivian UNov 14, 2022
The flux maps of some of these lines are shown in our #AstroPlotOfTheWeek plot - the ring is bright + the central AGN is compact in [FeII] and [ArII], but the H2 looks different, similar to ALMA CO maps where the molecular gas trace innermost spiral arms. 4/
Show threadVivian UNov 14, 2022
There's a lot more I could say about those beautiful maps (check out the paper!), but I'd like to highlight the dispersion maps of H2 and [FeII], which are sensitive to strong shocks. We'll come back to this point later. 5/
Show threadVivian UNov 14, 2022
#JWST #MRS is an IFU after all, so let's look at some spectra. We divided up the inner ISM region into a 3x3 grid and extracted their 1D spectra. The variations in line strength and profile of the different features are apparent, especially if you zoom in to see the details. 6/
Show threadVivian UNov 14, 2022
What caught our eye was the blueshifted wing in all the high-ionization coronal lines ([FeVIII], [MgVII], and, as shown in the inset,[MgV]). We fit [MgV] with 2 components and examined its kinematics; much of the broad component is seen up to ~420pc East of the nucleus. 7/
Show threadVivian UNov 14, 2022
Remember the enhanced dispersion in H2 and [FeII] a few tweets ago? We look at the ratio of H2/PAH vs [FeII]/Pfa (the denominators trace dust and SF and provide a calibration baseline) to assess ISM conditions. Seems well correlated - likely excited by the same shocks! 8/
Show threadVivian UNov 14, 2022
Putting it altogether, our simple model has the central #AGN driving a highly ionized wind toward us. This outflow plows and deposits energy into the dense ISM via shocks, releasing [FeII] into the gas phase and heating molecular H2 -- all inside the tilted rotating star-forming ring. 9/
Show threadVivian UNov 14, 2022
Overall this was a fun paper to work on given the impressive #JWST #MRS data from #ERS1328, made possible thanks to my #GOALS collaborators on and off Mastodon. Looking forward to more exciting science from this fantastic dataset! 10/10