TY - JOUR
T1 - Jetted narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies breaking the jet paradigm: A comprehensive study of host-galaxy morphologies
AU - Varglund, I.
AU - Järvelä, E.
AU - Lähteenmäki, A.
AU - Berton, M.
AU - Ciroi, S.
AU - Congiu, E.
N1 - Funding Information:
IRAF is distributed by the National Optical Astronomy Observatories, which are operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. Our observations were made with the Nordic Optical Telescope, operated by the Nordic Optical Telescope Scientific Association at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, La Palma, Spain, of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias. The data presented here were obtained in part with ALFOSC, which is provided by the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (IAA) under a joint agreement with the University of Copenhagen and NOT. This research has made use of GALFIT. This publication made use of the SIMBAD database, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This research made use of Astropy, a community-developed core Python package for Astronomy (Astropy Collaboration 2013, 2018). This publication makes use of data obtained at Metsähovi Radio Observatory, operated by Aalto University, Finland. I.V. would like to thank both the Finnish Cultural Foundation and the Vilho, Yrjö and Kalle Väisälä Foundation of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters for their support. E.J. is a current European Space Agency Science Research Fellow. M.B. is an ESO fellow. E.C. acknowledges support from ANID BASAL projects ACE210002 and FB210003.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 EDP Sciences. All rights reserved.
PY - 2022/12/8
Y1 - 2022/12/8
N2 - Narrow-line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) galaxies are unevolved active galactic nuclei (AGNs) that exist predominantly in spiral galaxies. However, mostly due to the small number of sources studied, it has been under debate whether also the hosts of jetted NLS1 galaxies, a particular subclass of these sources hosting a relativistic jet, are disk-like or elliptical, as the hosts of more powerful jetted AGNs. We studied the host morphologies of 14 NLS1 galaxies, 11 of which have been detected at 37 GHz, indicating that these sources harbour relativistic jets. The J- and Ks-band data used in this study were obtained with the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT). We performed the photometric decomposition of the host galaxy using the band that gave a better fit and additionally created colour maps of all sources that had both a J- and a Ks-band observation. We were able to successfully model 12 sources, nine of which most likely have disk-like morphologies. Of the remaining sources, one source could possibly be hosted either in a disk-like or a dwarf galaxy, and in two cases the results are inconclusive. Only one of our sources shows clear signs of interaction, but the colour maps of most of our sources hint at ample dust in the nuclei, possibly indicating earlier minor mergers, which can go unnoticed due to the limited resolution of these observations. Our results further support disk-like galaxies as the predominant host type of jetted NLS1 galaxies. Most importantly, with the number of modelled hosts of jetted NLS1s now exceeding 50, with only a few elliptical hosts, it seems to be safe to conclude that also disk-like galaxies are able to launch and maintain relativistic jets, and that the traditional jet paradigm stating that only massive elliptical galaxies are capable of hosting relativistic jets is severely outdated.
AB - Narrow-line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) galaxies are unevolved active galactic nuclei (AGNs) that exist predominantly in spiral galaxies. However, mostly due to the small number of sources studied, it has been under debate whether also the hosts of jetted NLS1 galaxies, a particular subclass of these sources hosting a relativistic jet, are disk-like or elliptical, as the hosts of more powerful jetted AGNs. We studied the host morphologies of 14 NLS1 galaxies, 11 of which have been detected at 37 GHz, indicating that these sources harbour relativistic jets. The J- and Ks-band data used in this study were obtained with the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT). We performed the photometric decomposition of the host galaxy using the band that gave a better fit and additionally created colour maps of all sources that had both a J- and a Ks-band observation. We were able to successfully model 12 sources, nine of which most likely have disk-like morphologies. Of the remaining sources, one source could possibly be hosted either in a disk-like or a dwarf galaxy, and in two cases the results are inconclusive. Only one of our sources shows clear signs of interaction, but the colour maps of most of our sources hint at ample dust in the nuclei, possibly indicating earlier minor mergers, which can go unnoticed due to the limited resolution of these observations. Our results further support disk-like galaxies as the predominant host type of jetted NLS1 galaxies. Most importantly, with the number of modelled hosts of jetted NLS1s now exceeding 50, with only a few elliptical hosts, it seems to be safe to conclude that also disk-like galaxies are able to launch and maintain relativistic jets, and that the traditional jet paradigm stating that only massive elliptical galaxies are capable of hosting relativistic jets is severely outdated.
KW - Galaxies: active
KW - Galaxies: Seyfert
KW - Galaxies: structure
KW - Infrared: galaxies
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85145353978&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1051/0004-6361/202244465
DO - 10.1051/0004-6361/202244465
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85145353978
SN - 0004-6361
VL - 668
JO - Astronomy and Astrophysics
JF - Astronomy and Astrophysics
M1 - 91
ER -