5 Conclusions

Continuum colour maps provide a powerful method to reveal scattered nuclear light in the circumnuclear regions of Seyfert 2 galaxies. As in our previous paper (KW97), we have detected elongated or double blue morphological structures in the B-I maps of several Seyfert 2 galaxies and found a good agreement with previous emission line and radio studies of these galaxies. In Mkn 533, Mkn 607, Mkn 1066, NGC 5347, NGC 5929, NGC 5953 and NGC 7319, we interpret the colour structure as arising from scattering of the nuclear continuum light from electrons or dust in extranuclear mirrors. In Mkn 1, NGC  788 and NGC 7212, the blue structures are less well in agreement with the radio and line emission, and their relationship with scattering regions remains uncertain. The colours of the blue maxima are consistent with those expected from scattering off dust or electrons, this conclusion strengthened by the combined sample of the two papers in this series. Our findings thus strongly support the current unified models of AGN.

Acknowledgements

Thanks go to the referee, M. De Robertis, for several suggestions leading to the improvement of the figures, and to R. Falomo for advice in producing the final figures. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology.