X-ray and optical observations of BL Lac objects: 3C 66A (B0219+428) and ON 325 (B1215+303)

¹ Dipartimento di Fisica, Università “La Sapienza”, Piazzale A. Moro 2, 00185 Roma, Italy
² ASI Science Data Center, c/o ESA-ESRIN, via G. Galilei, 00044 Frascati, Italy
³ Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica Cosmica, CNR, via del Fosso del Cavaliere 100, 00133 Roma, Italy
⁴ Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, via Bianchi 46, 22055 Merate, Italy
⁵ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Georgia State University, Atlanta GA, USA

Corresponding author: M. Perri, perri@asdc.asi.it

Received: 24 February 2003
Accepted: 10 June 2003

Abstract

We report the results of new observations of the two BL Lac objects 3C 66A and ON 325 performed with BeppoSAX and of nearly simultaneous photometric measurements in the bandpasses from I to B. 3C 66A was observed in January 1999 and in July 2001: its X-ray flux was  erg cm^-2 s^-1 in January 1999 and  erg cm^-2 s^-1 in July 2001. In both observations the X-ray spectrum can be fitted by a single power law with an energy index , steeper than that measured in the optical, equal to . The BeppoSAX observation of ON 325 was performed in December 1998 when its X-ray flux was  erg cm^-2 s^-1. The X-ray spectrum cannot be fitted by a single power law, but it is found to be well represented by a broken power law with a break energy at around 4 keV and energy indices equal to  and . Both sources are characterised by a synchrotron-dominated emission at energies lower than a few keV, with a sharp flattening toward higher energies due to the inverse Compton component. We obtained satisfactory modelling of the overall spectral energy distributions, from the optical to low energy X-rays, with log-parabolic laws.