Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2003-11-14
Astrophys.J. 600 (2003) L35-L38
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Accepted for publication in ApJ Letters, 13 pages, 3 figures; Corrected typos
Scientific paper
10.1086/381364
The most intense monitoring observations yet made were carried out on the Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 4151 in the optical and near-infrared wave-bands. A lag from the optical light curve to the near-infrared light curve was measured. The lag-time between the V and K light curves at the flux minimum in 2001 was precisely 48+2-3 days, as determined by a cross-correlation analysis. The correlation between the optical luminosity of an active galactic nucleus (AGN) and the lag-time between the UV/optical and the near-infrared light curves is presented for NGC 4151 in combination with previous lag-time measurements of NGC 4151 and other AGNs in the literature. This correlation is interpreted as thermal dust reverberation in an AGN, where the near-infrared emission from an AGN is expected to be the thermal re-radiation from hot dust surrounding the central engine at a radius where the temperature equals to that of the dust sublimation temperature. We find that the inner radius of the dust torus in NGC 4151 is $\sim $ 0.04 pc corresponding to the measured lag-time, well outside the broad line region (BLR) determined by other reverberation studies of the emission lines.
Aoki Tadao
Enya Keigo
Kobayashi Yasuaki
Minezaki Takeo
Peterson Bruce A.
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