| Issue |
A&A
Volume 425, Number 3, October III 2004
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Page(s) | L49 - L52 | |
| Section | Letters | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:200400064 | |
| Published online | 28 September 2004 | |
Letter to the Editor
Hard X-ray view of the past activity of Sgr A
in a natural Compton
mirror
1
Space Research Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Profsoyuznaya 84/32, 117997 Moscow, Russia e-mail: revnivtsev@hea.iki.rssi.ru
2
Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 1, 85740 Garching bei München, Germany
3
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Received:
11
August
2004
Accepted:
31
August
2004
We report the association of the recently discovered hard
X-ray source IGR J17475-2822 with the giant molecular cloud Sgr B2 in
the Galactic Center region. The broad band (3–200 keV) spectrum of
the source constructed from data of different observatories strongly supports
the idea that the X-ray emission of Sgr B2 is Compton scattered
and reprocessed radiation emitted in the past by the Sgr A source. We
conclude that 300–400 years ago Sgr A was a low luminosity (
erg s-1 at 2–200 keV) AGN with a
characteristic hard X-ray spectrum (photon index 
). We estimate the mass and iron abundance of the Sgr B2
scattering gas at 
and
1.9 solar, respectively (where r is the radius of the cloud).
Key words: Galaxy: center / ISM: clouds: individual: Sgr B2 / X-rays: ISM
© ESO, 2004
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