HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE OBSERVATIONS OF THE DOUBLE-PEAKED EMISSION LINES IN THE SEYFERT GALAXY MARKARIAN 78: MASS OUTFLOWS FROM A SINGLE ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Georgia State University, Astronomy Offices, One Park Place South SE, Suite 700, Atlanta, GA 30303 (United States)
- Institute for Astrophysics and Computational Sciences, Department of Physics, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC 20064 (United States)
- Computational Physics, Inc, Springfield, VA 22151-2110 (United States)
- Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-2421 (United States)
Previous ground-based observations of the Seyfert 2 galaxy Mrk 78 revealed a double set of emission lines, similar to those seen in several active galactic nuclei (AGNs) from recent surveys. Are the double lines due to two AGNs with different radial velocities in the same galaxy, or are they due to mass outflows from a single AGN? We present a study of the outflowing ionized gas in the resolved narrow-line region (NLR) of Mrk 78 using observations from the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and Faint Object Camera aboard the Hubble Space Telescope as part of an ongoing project to determine the kinematics and geometries of AGN outflows. From the spectroscopic information, we determined the fundamental geometry of the outflow via our kinematics modeling program by recreating radial velocities to fit those seen in four different STIS slit positions. We determined that the double emission lines seen in ground-based spectra are due to an asymmetric distribution of outflowing gas in the NLR. By successfully fitting a model for a single AGN to Mrk 78, we show that it is possible to explain double emission lines with radial velocity offsets seen in AGN similar to Mrk 78 without requiring dual supermassive black holes.
- OSTI ID:
- 21567579
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 727, Issue 2; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/727/2/71; ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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