NGC 1097 at high spatial resolution in the mid-infrared

To search for thermal emission from a dusty AGN torus associated with the compact starburst in the nucleus of the LINER/Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 1097, we have performed mid-IR imaging at high (<= 0.5") angular resolution. Emission from warm dust is detected, but fitting clumpy torus models shows that the major source heating the dust is the nuclear stellar cluster rather than the weak active nucleus. This could suggest that the dust is not directly associated with the AGN, consistent with calculations and other observations suggesting that low-luminosity AGN do not host obscuring tori. However, it does not rule out that the dusty starburst itself could be the obscurer of the unified model.