The Close AGN Reference Survey (CARS): SOFIA Detects Spatially Resolved [C ii] Emission in the Luminous AGN HE 0433-1028

We report spatially resolved [C ii] λ158 μm observations of HE 0433-1028, which is the first detection of a nearby luminous active galactic nucleus (AGN; redshift 0.0355) with the Field-Imaging Far-Infrared Line Spectrometer (FIFI-LS) on board the airborne Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). We compare the spatially resolved star formation tracers [C ii], as provided by our SOFIA observations, and Hα from the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) optical integral-field spectroscopy. We find that the [C ii] emission is mainly matching the extended star formation as traced by the extinction-corrected Hα line emission but some additional flux is present. While a larger sample is needed to statistically confirm our findings and investigate possible dependencies on AGN luminosity and star formation rate, our study underlines the necessity of collecting a spatially resolved optical–far-infrared data set for nearby AGNs, and shows that it is technically feasible to collect such data sets with FIFI-LS on board SOFIA.