Astronomy & Astrophysics

Free access article

Issue		A&A Volume 429, Number 1, January I 2005
Page(s)		L9 - L12
Section		Letters
DOI		10.1051/0004-6361:200400104

A&A 429, L9-L12 (2005)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:200400104

Letter

The early stage of a cosmic collision? XMM-Newton unveils two obscured AGN in the galaxy pair ESO509-IG066

M. Guainazzi¹, E. Piconcelli¹, E. Jiménez-Bailón¹ and G. Matt²

¹ XMM-Newton Science Operation Center, European Space Astronomy Center, ESA, Apartado 50727, 28080 Madrid, Spain
e-mail: mguainaz@xmm.vilspa.esa.es
² Dipartimento di Fisica "E. Amaldi", Università "Roma Tre", via della Vasca Navale 84, 00146, Roma, Italy

(Received 13 September 2004 / Accepted 13 November 2004)

Abstract
We report the XMM-Newton discovery of a X-ray bright AGN pair in the interacting galaxy system ESO509-IG066. Both galaxies host an X-ray luminous ( $L_{\rm X} \sim 10^$ erg s ^-1) obscured nucleus with column densities $N_{\rm H} \simeq 7 \times 10^$ cm ^-2 and $N_{\rm H} \simeq 5 \times 10^$ cm ^-2. The optical morphology is only mildly disturbed, suggesting a merging system in the early stage of its evolution. Still, the pair is probably gravitationally bound, and might eventually evolve into a compact, fully gas embedded systems such as NGC 6240 (Komossa et al. 2003).

Key words: galaxies: interactions -- galaxies: Seyfert -- galaxies: individual: ESO509-IG066 -- X-rays: galaxies

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