Paper detail

The central kpc of edge-on AGN

The NIR is less influenced by dust extinction than optical light. This enables us to look to an extent through dusty regions. In addition, it is sensitive to the mass-dominating stellar population. The combination of NIR imaging and spectroscopy of the VLT integral field spectrograph SINFONI gives us the opportunity to analyze several emission and absorption lines and to investigate the stellar population and ionization mechanisms over a field of view (FOV) of 4x4 square arcsec. We detect several emission lines ([Si VI], Paα, Brγ, H_2, [Fe II]) and analyze these to disentangle the ionization mechanisms and the kinematics of the gas. We use the absorption features of Si I, CO(6-3) and CO(2-0) and the large wavelength range of H+K-band for a thorough continuum synthesis. We fit a stellar, dust and power-law contribution together with an extinction component to the H+K-band emission. The result presents regions dominated by the different contributors and extinction information over the full FOV.