Resolving polar dust in AGN with JWST

Autor: Leist, Mason T., Packham, Chris, Rosario, David J., Hicks, Erin K. S., Stalevski, Marko, Burtscher, Leonard, Alonso-Herrero, Almudena, Labiano, Alvaro, Bellocchi, Enrica
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
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Popis: The launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) promises to revolutionize infrared astronomy and our understanding of outflows in active galactic nuclei (AGN). Our approved Cycle 1 program, will use JWST’s exquisite low surface brightness sensitivity in the mid-infrared (MIR; 8-25 μm) to observe the diffuse polar dust emission found in AGN with unprecedented sensitivity. Relying on JWST’s stable PSF, we will use four deconvolution techniques (see 4) to establish the structure of this diffuse emission below the resolution of the telescope. To explore these techniques, we have used MIRISim to simulate JWST’s complex PSF applied on a model of an AGN consisting of a resolved biconical structure and an unresolved AGN point source. Here we report on our assessment of the optimum deconvolution strategy, based on comparisons of the flux conservation, FWHM, and Strehl ratios of the deconvolved images with the input model. Our work aims to connect the observations of high-resolution MIR imagers on large ground-based telescopes (i.e., the Thirty Meter Telescope) with the much higher sensitivity JWST observations.
Databáze: OpenAIRE