This merging system contains two nuclei in both the radio continuum and the near-infrared separated by 0.95" (350 pc projected separation). A detailed discussion of the NICMOS data on this galaxy is given in Scoville et al. (1998). In the data, extremely high reddening gradients are seen to the south of the brighter western nucleus and to the south of the eastern peak seen in the 1.1 µm images. In fact, the extinction is so high on the east that in the extinction-corrected image, the eastern peak which we identify with the eastern nucleus lies well to the south of the 1.1 µm peak, between this peak and a weak third peak seen in the 2.2 µm image. The strong obscuration to the south of the western peak can be interpreted as an inclined dust disk (i 30°) embedded in the nuclear star cluster (Scoville et al. 1998). The light which escapes the cluster can appear crescent-shaped if the disk is of size comparable to (or smaller than) the cluster and embedded within the cluster.

Shaded contour plots of the extinction corrected 2.2 µm emission are shown together with the 1.1 µm (upper left) observed emission. In both panels, the contours and shading are logarithmic with the contours spaced by factors 2^1/2. (The level values are the same as for the figure above). The arcsec displacements in RA and DEC, given along the borders are measured from the 2.2 µm in all frames. At the upper left, a length bar is drawn. For the ratio image, both the 2.2 and 1.1 µm images were smoothed with the same adaptive smoothing and then smoothed with a Gaussian FWHM = 0.2" in calculating the 2.2 µm opacity from Eq. 3 (see text). In cases where a strong point-source or variable background contaminated the 2.2 µm image, the extinction corrected image was derived for 1.6 µm. For the galaxies with strong point-sources, the PSF was fit to the source and then subtracted and replaced by a Gaussian with the proper integrated flux (see text - NGC 7469, IRAS 08572+3915, IRAS 05189-2524, PKS 1345+12, IRAS 07598+6508, Mrk 1014 and 3C48).