Diffraction-limited Imaging and Photometry of NGC 1068

The nearby Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC 1068 was observed with speckle imaging techniques in the near-infrared H band (1.6 μm) with the 200-inch Hale Telescope on Palomar Mountain and K band (2.2 μm) with the 10 m Keck I Telescope at the W. M. Keck Observatory. Images with diffraction-limited or near–diffraction-limited resolutions of 0 05–0 1 were obtained and used to search for structure in the nuclear region. Images of the nucleus of NGC 1068 reveal an extended region of emission, accounting for nearly 50% of the nuclear flux in the K band. This region extends 10 pc on either side of an unresolved point-source nucleus that is at most 0 02 or 1.4 pc in size. Both the point source and the newly imaged extended emission are very red, with identical H - K colors corresponding to a color temperature of 800 K. While the point source is of a size to be consistent with grains in thermal equilibrium with the nuclear source, the extended emission is not. It must consist either of nuclear emission that has been reflected off an extended dusty disk or of small grains raised to transiently high temperatures by reflected UV photons.