10 micron imaging of Seyfert galaxies from the 12 micron sample

We present small-aperture (1."5) photometry and new high-resolution images at 10 mum (N band) for 87 Seyfert galaxies from the Extended 12 mum Sample drawn from the IRAS database. With this data we hope to test the predictions of the unified model for active galactic nuclei and to search for bright, extended circumnuclear 10 mum emission. We detected 62 Seyfert galaxies, 18 of which have no previously published small-aperture photometry. All the detected sources, both Seyfert 1's and Seyfert 2's, show a central point source. The 31 Seyfert 1's and 31 Seyfert 2's that we detected have similar luminosity distributions. Except for previously known bright extended 10 mum structure around Arp 220, NGC 1068, and NGC 7469, we see definitive evidence for bright extended emission around only one new object: Mrk 1239. Four other Seyfert 1' s and six other Seyfert 2' s show evidence of faint, low-level extended emission. One Seyfert 1 and two Seyfert 2' s show evidence of significantly increased flux over previously published small-aperture values. We also compared the N-band data with the J - K-s color that we derived from the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS). There is a distinct trend of redder central bulge J - K-s colors corresponding to brighter absolute N-band magnitudes. In color-magnitude space there is a definite grouping of Seyfert 1' s and Seyfert 2' s, with two sets of outliers.