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

Abstract

We report spatially-resolved [CII]$λ158$ $μ$m observations of HE 0433-1028, which is the first detection of a nearby luminous AGN (redshift 0.0355) with FIFI-LS onboard the airborne observatory SOFIA. We compare the spatially-resolved star formation tracers [CII], as provided by our SOFIA observations, and H$α$ from MUSE optical integral-field spectroscopy. We find that the [CII] emission is mainly matching the extended star formation as traced by the extinction-corrected H$α$ 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-FIR dataset for nearby AGNs, and shows that it is technically feasible to collect such datasets with FIFI-LS onboard SOFIA.

8 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, to appear in the SOFIA Focus issue