A panchromatic spatially resolved study of the inner 500 pc of NGC 1052 : I. Stellar population

We map optical and near-infrared (NIR) stellar population properties of the inner 320 × 535 pc2 of the elliptical galaxy NGC 1052. The optical and NIR spectra were obtained using the Gemini Integral Field Units of the GMOS instrument and NIFS, respectively. By performing stellar population synthesis in the optical alone, we find that this region of the galaxy is dominated by old (t > 10 Gyr) stellar populations. Using the NIR, we find the nucleus to be dominated by old stellar populations, and a circumnuclear ring with younger (~2.5 Gyr) stars. We also combined the optical and NIR datacubes and performed a panchromatic spatially resolved stellar population synthesis, which resulted in a dominance of older stellar populations, in agreement with optical results. We argue that the technique of combining optical and NIR data might be useful to isolate the contribution of stellar population ages with strong NIR absorption bands. We also derive the stellar kinematics and find that the stellar motions are dominated by a high (~240 km s−1) velocity dispersion in the nucleus, with stars also rotating around the centre. Lastly, we measure the absorption bands, both in the optical and in the NIR, and find a nuclear drop in their equivalent widths. The favoured explanation for this drop is a featureless continuum emission from the low luminosity active galactic nucleus.