Probing the Physics of Narrow Line Regions in Active Galaxies II: The Siding Spring Southern Seyfert Spectroscopic Snapshot Survey (S7)

TL;DR

This paper introduces the S7 survey, which uses integral field spectroscopy to study the narrow line regions in 64 active galaxies, providing detailed spectral and morphological data to understand AGN physics.

Contribution

The paper presents the first data release of the S7 survey, offering high-resolution spectral and imaging data of Seyfert galaxies' narrow line regions, including analysis of emission lines and morphology.

Findings

Mapped the spatial extent of NLR and ENLR in 64 galaxies.

Analyzed emission line fluxes and nuclear reddening.

Explored the origin of coronal emission lines in Seyfert galaxies.

Abstract

Here we describe the \emph{Siding Spring Southern Seyfert Spectroscopic Snapshot Survey} (S7) and present results on 64 galaxies drawn from the first data release. The S7 uses the Wide Field Spectrograph (WiFeS) mounted on the ANU 2.3m telescope located at the Siding Spring Observatory to deliver an integral field of $38\times25$~ arcsec at a spectral resolution of $R=7000$ in the red ($530-710$nm), and $R=3000$ in the blue ($340-560$nm). {From these data cubes we have extracted the Narrow Line Region (NLR) spectra from a 4 arc sec aperture centred on the nucleus. We also determine the H$\beta$ and [OIII]~$\lambda$5007 fluxes in the narrow lines, the nuclear reddening, the reddening-corrected relative intensities of the observed emission lines, and the H$\beta$ and \lOIII\ luminosities {determined from spectra for which the stellar continuum has been removed.} We present a set of images of the galaxies in [OIII]~$\lambda$5007, [NII]~$\lambda$6584 and H$\alpha$ which serve to delineate the spatial extent of the extended narrow line region (ENLR) and {\bf also to} reveal the structure and morphology of the surrounding \HII\ regions. Finally, we provide a preliminary discussion of those Seyfert~1 and Seyfert~2 galaxies which display coronal emission lines in order to explore the origin of these lines.