The multitude of unresolved continuum sources at 1.6 microns in Hubble Space Telescope images of Seyfert galaxies

We examine 112 Seyfert galaxies observed by the Hubble Space Telescope at 1 .6 mum. We find that similar to 50% of the Seyfert 2.0 galaxies which are p art of the Revised Shapely-Ames (RSA) Catalog or the CfA redshift sample co ntain unresolved continuum sources at 1.6 mum. All but a couple of the Seyf ert 1.0-1.9 galaxies display unresolved continuum sources. The unresolved s ources have fluxes of order 1 mJy, near-infrared luminosities of order 10(4 1) ergs s(-1), and absolute magnitudes M-H similar to -16. Comparison non-S eyfert galaxies from the RSA Catalog display significantly fewer (similar t o 20%), somewhat lower luminosity nuclear sources, which could be due to co mpact star clusters. We find that the luminosities of the unresolved Seyfer t 1.0-1.9 sources at 1.6 mum are correlated with [O III] lambda 5007 and ha rd X-ray luminosities, implying that these sources are nonstellar. Assuming a spectral energy distribution similar to that of a Seyfert 2 galaxy, we e stimate that a few percent of local spiral galaxies contain black holes emi tting as Seyferts at a moderate fraction, similar to 10(-1)-10(-4), of thei r Eddington luminosities. We find no strong correlation between 1.6 km flux es and hard X-ray or [O III] lambda 5007 fluxes for the pure Seyfert 2.0 ga laxies. These galaxies also tend to have lower 1.6 km luminosities compared to the Seyfert 1.0-1.9 galaxies of similar [O III] luminosity. Either larg e extinctions are present toward their continuum- (A(V) similar to 20-40) e mitting regions or some fraction of the unresolved sources at 1.6 km are co mpact star clusters. With increasing Seyfert type the fraction of unresolve d sources detected at 1.6 km and the ratio of 1.6 km to [O III] fluxes tend to decrease. These trends are consistent with the unification model for Se yfert 1 and 2 galaxies.