The Close AGN Reference Survey (CARS): SOFIA detects spatially-resolved [C II] emission in the luminous AGN HE0433-1028

We report spatially resolved [C ii] λ158 μm observations of HE 0433-1028, which is the first detection of a nearby luminous active galactic nucleus (AGN; redshift 0.0355) with the Field-Imaging Far-Infrared Line Spectrometer (FIFI-LS) on board the airborne Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). We compare the spatially resolved star formation tracers [C ii], as provided by our SOFIA observations, and Hα from the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) optical integral-field spectroscopy. We find that the [C ii] emission is mainly matching the extended star formation as traced by the extinction-corrected Hα line emission but some additional flux is present. While a larger sample is needed to statistically confirm our findings and investigate possible dependencies on AGN luminosity and star formation rate, our study underlines the necessity of collecting a spatially resolved optical-far-infrared data set for nearby AGNs, and shows that it is technically feasible to collect such data sets with FIFI-LS on board SOFIA. © 2018. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

Based in part on observations made with the NASA/DLR Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). SOFIA is jointly operated by the Universities Space Research Association, Inc. (USRA), under NASA contract NAS2-97001, and the Deutsches SOFIA Institut (DSI) under DLR contract 50 OK 0901 to the University of Stuttgart. We thank the anonymous referee for a constructive report that helped to clarify the manuscript. This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) via SFB 956, subprojects A2, and A6. The work of S.B. and C.O. was supported by NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada). M.G. is supported by NASA through Einstein Postdoctoral Fellowship Award No. PF5-160137 issued by the Chandra X-ray Observatory Center, which is operated by the SAO for and on behalf of NASA under contract NAS8-03060. Support for this work was also provided by Chandra grant GO7-18121X. M.K. acknowledges support by DLR 50OR1802. M.P.T. acknowledges support from the Spanish MINECO through grants AYA2012-38491-C02-02 and AYA2015-63939-C2-1-P.