Artillery Shells over Circinus

The recently identified Circinus Galaxy is the nearest (about 4 Mpc) Seyfert 2 galaxy known and we now demonstrate to be one of the best laboratories for studying the effects of nuclear activity on the surrounding environment. Here we present new imaging Fabry-Perot observations of Circinus which confirm the existence of an ionization cone in this object but also show for the first time a complex of ionized filaments extending radially from the nucleus out to distances of 1 kpc. Arcs suggestive of bow shocks are observed at the terminus of some of these filamentary structures. Most spectacular of all, one of the structures appears to be a scaled-up version of a Herbig-Haro jet. The velocity field of the filaments confirms that they represent material expelled from the nucleus (possibly in the form of `bullets') or entrained in a wide-angle wind roughly aligned with the polar axis of the galaxy. The motions observed across the ionization cone are highly supersonic, so high-velocity shocks are likely to contribute to the ionization of the line emitting gas. However, it is not clear at present whether shock ionization dominates over photoionization by the Seyfert 2 nucleus. Extrapolation of the filaments to smaller radii comes to within 1 arcsec (about 20 pc) of the infrared nucleus, therefore suggesting a AGN or nuclear starburst origin to these features. The complex of radial filaments detected in the Circinus galaxy is unique among active galaxies. The frequency of such events is unknown since only a handful of galaxies have been observed at the sensitivity level of our present observations. The event in the Circinus galaxy may represent a relatively common evolutionary phase in the lives of gas-rich active galaxies during which the dusty cocoon surrounding the nucleus is expelled by the action of jet or wind phenomena.