2018/03/05 by Saeko Oda, Yoshihiro Ueda, Atsushi Tanimoto +1 · 10 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Accretion (finance) #Active galactic nucleus #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Hubble sequence #Luminosity #Luminous infrared galaxy #Spiral galaxy #Torus #astro-ph.GA #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.3847/1538-4357/aaaccc
published in The Astrophysical Journal 855(2), 79 (IOP Publishing) · 11 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ
arxiv created 2018/03/05 · openalex publication_date 2018/03/09 · arxiv updated 2018/03/28 · openalex created_date 2018/03/29 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Abstract We report the hard X-ray (3–50 keV) view of the compact group HCG 16 (Arp 318) observed with the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array ( NuSTAR ). NGC 838 and NGC 839 are undetected at energies above 8 keV, showing no evidence of heavily obscured active galactic nuclei (AGNs). This confirms that these are starburst-dominant galaxies as previously suggested. We perform a comprehensive broadband (0.3–50 keV) X-ray spectral analysis of the interacting galaxies NGC 833 and NGC 835, using data of NuSTAR , Chandra , and XMM-Newton observed on multiple epochs from 2000 to 2015. NuSTAR detects the transmitted continua of low-luminosity active galactic nuclei (LLAGNs) in NGC 833 and NGC 835 with line-of-sight column densities of ≈3 × 10 23 cm −2 and intrinsic 2–10 keV luminosities of ≈3 × 10 41 erg s −1 . The iron-K α to hard X-ray luminosity ratios of NGC 833 and NGC 835 suggest that their tori are moderately developed, which may have been triggered by the galaxy interactions. We find that NGC 835 underwent long-term variability in both intrinsic luminosity (by a factor of 5) and absorption (by Δ N H ≈ 2 × 10 23 cm −2 ). We discuss the relation between the X-ray and total infrared luminosities in local LLAGNs hosted by spiral galaxies. The large diversity in their ratios is consistent with the general idea that the mass accretion process in the nucleus and the star-forming activity in the disk are not strongly coupled, regardless of the galaxy environment.