CaltechAUTHORS
Published August 2020 | Version Accepted Version + Published
Journal Article Open

A Compton-thick nucleus in the dual active galactic nuclei of Mrk 266

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon University of Barcelona
  • 2. ROR icon Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats
  • 3. ROR icon Diego Portales University
  • 4. ROR icon Peking University
  • 5. ROR icon George Mason University
  • 6. ROR icon National Radio Astronomy Observatory
  • 7. ROR icon University of Florida
  • 8. ROR icon Clemson University
  • 9. ROR icon Hiroshima University
  • 10. ROR icon University of Crete
  • 11. ROR icon FORTH Institute of Astrophysics
  • 12. ROR icon University of Virginia
  • 13. ROR icon Infrared Processing and Analysis Center
  • 14. ROR icon National Astronomical Observatories

Abstract

We present the results from our analysis of NuSTAR data of the luminous infrared galaxy Mrk 266, which contains two nuclei, south-western (SW) and north-eastern (NE), which were resolved in previous Chandra imaging. Combining this with the Chandra data, we intepret the hard X-ray spectrum obtained from a NuSTAR observation to result from a steeply rising flux from a Compton-thick active galactic nuclei (AGN) in the SW nucleus which is very faint in the Chandra band, confirming the previous claim. This hard X-ray component is dominated by reflection, and its intrinsic 2–10 keV luminosity is likely to be ∼1 × 10⁴³ erg s⁻¹. Although it is bright in soft X-ray, only a moderately absorbed NE nucleus has a 2–10 keV luminosity of 4 × 10⁴¹ erg s⁻¹, placing it in the low-luminosity AGN class. These results have implications for understanding the detectability and duty cycles of emission from dual AGN in heavily obscured mergers.

Additional Information

© 2020 ESO. Article published by EDP Sciences. Received 27 May 2020; Accepted 6 July 2020; Published online 19 August 2020. This research made use of data obtained from NuSTAR, XMM-Newton and Chandra X-ray Observatory, software packages of HEASoft and R (R Core Team 2017), and the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Databases (NED), which is funded by the National Aeronatutics and Space Administration and operated by the California Institute of Technology. KI acknowledges support by the Spanish MICINN under grant PID2019-105510GB-C33. T. D-S. acknowledges support from the CASSACA and CONICYT fund CAS-CONICYT Call 2018. C. R. acknowledges support from the Fondecyt Iniciacion grant 11190831. ASE, GCP and KI acknowledge NASA Astrophysics Data Analysis Program (ADAP) Grant 80NSSC20K0450 (PI: U). ASE was also supported by NSF grant AST 1816838.

Attached Files

Published - aa38513-20.pdf

Accepted Version - 2007.03258.pdf

Files

2007.03258.pdf

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Additional details

Additional titles

Alternative title
A Compton-thick nucleus in the dual AGN of Mrk 266

Identifiers

Eprint ID
105066
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20200824-074646692

Related works

Describes
https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.03258 (URL)

Funding

Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MCINN)
PID2019-105510GB-C33
Chinese Academy of Sciences South America Center for Astronomy (CASSACA)
Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica (CONICYT)
CAS-CONICYT Call 2018
Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico (FONDECYT)
11190831
NASA
80NSSC20K0450
NSF
AST-1816838

Dates

Created
2020-08-24
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-16
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)