On the nature of the near-UV extended light in Seyfert galaxies
  We study the nature of the extended near-UV emission in the inner kiloparsec
of a sample of 15 Seyfert galaxies which have both near-UV (F330W) and narrow
band [OIII] high resolution Hubble images. For the majority of the objects we
find a very similar morphology in both bands. From the [OIII] images we
construct synthetic images of the nebular continuum plus the emission line
contribution expected through the F330W filter, which can be subtracted from
the F330W images. We find that the emission of the ionised gas dominates the
near-UV extended emission in half of the objects. A further broad band
photometric study, in the bands F330W (U), F547M (V) and F160W (H), shows that
the remaining emission is dominated by the underlying galactic bulge
contribution. We also find a blue component whose nature is not clear in 4 out
of 15 objects. This component may be attributed to scattered light from the
AGN, to a young stellar population in unresolved star clusters, or to
early-disrupted clusters. Star forming regions and/or bright off-nuclear star
clusters are observed in 4/15 galaxies of the sample.
