ALMA IMAGING OF THE CO (6-5) LINE EMISSION IN NGC 7130
- Yunnan Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650011 (China)
- National Astronomical Observatories of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100012 (China)
- Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, California Institute of Technology 100-22, Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
- Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008 (China)
- Department of Astronomy, University of Virginia, 530 McCormick Road, Charlottesville, VA 22904 (United States)
- Núcleo de Astronomía de la Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad Diego Portales, Av. Ejército Libertador 441, Santiago (Chile)
- Department of Physics, University of Crete, GR-71003 Heraklion (Greece)
- Spitzer Science Center, California Institute of Technology, MS 220-6, Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
- Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9513, 2300 RA Leiden (Netherlands)
- National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Charlottesville, VA 22904 (United States)
- School of Space Science and Physics, Shandong University at Weihai, Weihai, Shandong 264209 (China)
- National Optical Astronomy Observatory, 950 North Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85719 (United States)
In this paper, we report our high-resolution (0.″20 × 0.″14 or ∼70 × 49 pc) observations of the CO(6-5) line emission, which probes warm and dense molecular gas, and the 434 μm dust continuum in the nuclear region of NGC 7130, obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA). The CO line and dust continuum fluxes detected in our ALMA observations are 1230 ± 74 Jy km s{sup −1} and 814 ± 52 mJy, respectively, which account for 100% and 51% of their total fluxes. We find that the CO(6-5) and dust emissions are generally spatially correlated, but their brightest peaks show an offset of ∼70 pc, suggesting that the gas and dust emissions may start decoupling at this physical scale. The brightest peak of the CO(6-5) emission does not spatially correspond to the radio continuum peak, which is likely dominated by an active galactic nucleus (AGN). This, together with our additional quantitative analysis, suggests that the heating contribution of the AGN to the CO(6-5) emission in NGC 7130 is negligible. The CO(6-5) and the extinction-corrected Pa-α maps display striking differences, suggestive of either a breakdown of the correlation between warm dense gas and star formation at linear scales of <100 pc or a large uncertainty in our extinction correction to the observed Pa-α image. Over a larger scale of ∼2.1 kpc, the double-lobed structure found in the CO(6-5) emission agrees well with the dust lanes in the optical/near-infrared images.
- OSTI ID:
- 22524882
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 820, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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