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Probing the circumnuclear absorbing medium of the buried AGN in NGC 1068 through NuSTAR observations

Probing the circumnuclear absorbing medium of the buried AGN in NGC 1068 through NuSTAR observations
Probing the circumnuclear absorbing medium of the buried AGN in NGC 1068 through NuSTAR observations

We present the results of the latest NuSTAR monitoring campaign of the Compton-thick Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC 1068, composed of four ∼50 ks observations performed between 2017 July and 2018 February to search for flux and spectral variability on time-scales from 1 to 6 months. We detect one unveiling and one eclipsing event with time-scales less than 27 and 91 d, respectively, ascribed to Compton-thick material with NH = (1.8 ± 0.8) × 1024 and < (2.4 ± 0.5) × 1024 cm-2 moving across our line of sight. This gas is likely located in the innermost part of the torus or even further inward, thus providing further evidence of the clumpy structure of the circumnuclear matter in this source. Taking advantage of simultaneous Swift-XRT observations, we also detected a new flaring ULX, at a distance d ∼ 30 arcsec (i.e. ∼2 kpc) from the nuclear region of NGC 1068, with a peak X-ray intrinsic luminosity of (3.0 ± 0.4) × 1040 erg s-1 in the 2-10 keV band.

Active - galaxies, Galaxies, Galaxies -X-rays, Individual, NGC 1068, NGC 1068 - galaxies, Seyfert -X-rays
1365-2966
3872-3884
Zaino, A.
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Bianchi, S.
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Marinucci, A.
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Matt, G.
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Bauer, F.E.
60153223-72ee-4e8f-8e6c-f40a49aa032c
Brandt, W.N.
833e017c-17a6-4351-abd6-c886e7137c2d
Gandhi, Poshak
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Guainazzi, M.
f8a82b09-bb7c-46d9-bacd-b000dd3e7bc7
Iwasawa, K.
cc4f92e9-4ffc-4850-a3ac-21ec68f33685
Puccetti, S.
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Ricci, C.
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Walton, D.J.
bae7f86c-ae92-47fa-b0da-598690f46549
Zaino, A.
c0dfe2dd-0180-45bc-b5df-f12dafbaa45b
Bianchi, S.
13666ed9-509e-4ee4-b4b4-d28b5bdf166d
Marinucci, A.
2051ab25-5974-4a26-90db-d0997f508c3d
Matt, G.
6034e830-68b6-469e-aee4-b5898ff00d0c
Bauer, F.E.
60153223-72ee-4e8f-8e6c-f40a49aa032c
Brandt, W.N.
833e017c-17a6-4351-abd6-c886e7137c2d
Gandhi, Poshak
5bc3b5af-42b0-4dd8-8f1f-f74048d4d4a9
Guainazzi, M.
f8a82b09-bb7c-46d9-bacd-b000dd3e7bc7
Iwasawa, K.
cc4f92e9-4ffc-4850-a3ac-21ec68f33685
Puccetti, S.
7113d325-99c9-45f9-a722-6b9a9c71c561
Ricci, C.
b4ab3d75-6b00-4392-afde-32c1d855fe2c
Walton, D.J.
bae7f86c-ae92-47fa-b0da-598690f46549

Zaino, A., Bianchi, S., Marinucci, A., Matt, G., Bauer, F.E., Brandt, W.N., Gandhi, Poshak, Guainazzi, M., Iwasawa, K., Puccetti, S., Ricci, C. and Walton, D.J. (2020) Probing the circumnuclear absorbing medium of the buried AGN in NGC 1068 through NuSTAR observations. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, (3), 3872-3884. (doi:10.1093/mnras/staa107).

Record type: Article

Abstract

We present the results of the latest NuSTAR monitoring campaign of the Compton-thick Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC 1068, composed of four ∼50 ks observations performed between 2017 July and 2018 February to search for flux and spectral variability on time-scales from 1 to 6 months. We detect one unveiling and one eclipsing event with time-scales less than 27 and 91 d, respectively, ascribed to Compton-thick material with NH = (1.8 ± 0.8) × 1024 and < (2.4 ± 0.5) × 1024 cm-2 moving across our line of sight. This gas is likely located in the innermost part of the torus or even further inward, thus providing further evidence of the clumpy structure of the circumnuclear matter in this source. Taking advantage of simultaneous Swift-XRT observations, we also detected a new flaring ULX, at a distance d ∼ 30 arcsec (i.e. ∼2 kpc) from the nuclear region of NGC 1068, with a peak X-ray intrinsic luminosity of (3.0 ± 0.4) × 1040 erg s-1 in the 2-10 keV band.

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Probing the circumnuclear absorbing medium of the buried AGN in NGC 1068 through NuSTAR observations - Accepted Manuscript
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Accepted/In Press date: 10 January 2020
e-pub ahead of print date: 15 January 2020
Published date: 1 March 2020
Additional Information: Funding Information: We thank the anonymous referee for her/his useful comments and suggestions which improved the quality and the clarity of the paper. AZ, SB, and GM acknowledge financial support from the Italian Space Agency under grant no. 2017-14-H.O. SB acknowledges financial support from the Italian Space Agency under grant ASI-INAF I/037/12/0. AM and GM acknowledge financial support from the Italian Space Agency under grant ASI-INAF I/037/12/0-011/13. FEB acknowledges support from CONICYT-Chile (Basal AFB-170002) and the Ministry of Economy, Development, and Tourism’s Millennium Science Initiative through grant IC120009, Funding Information: awarded to the Millennium Institute of Astrophysics, MAS. CR acknowledges support from the CONICYT + PAI Convocatoria Nacional subvencion a instalacion en la academia convocatoria año 2017 PAI77170080. This research made use of data from the NuSTAR mission, a project led by the California Institute of Technology, managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and funded by NASA, and of the NuSTARDAS jointly developed by the ASI Science Data Center (ASDC, Italy) and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech, USA). We also thank the Swift team for having scheduled our ToO request as soon as possible, and provided useful data for this paper through archival XRT observations. Publisher Copyright: © 2020 Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Active - galaxies, Galaxies, Galaxies -X-rays, Individual, NGC 1068, NGC 1068 - galaxies, Seyfert -X-rays

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 439446
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/439446
ISSN: 1365-2966
PURE UUID: 57ded780-aa75-4417-a7c0-e293eb76813f
ORCID for Poshak Gandhi: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-3105-2615

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Date deposited: 23 Apr 2020 16:33
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 03:36

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Contributors

Author: A. Zaino
Author: S. Bianchi
Author: A. Marinucci
Author: G. Matt
Author: F.E. Bauer
Author: W.N. Brandt
Author: Poshak Gandhi ORCID iD
Author: M. Guainazzi
Author: K. Iwasawa
Author: S. Puccetti
Author: C. Ricci
Author: D.J. Walton

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