Issue |
A&A
Volume 597, January 2017
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A100 | |
Number of page(s) | 9 | |
Section | Extragalactic astronomy | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201629444 | |
Published online | 11 January 2017 |
The Phoenix galaxy as seen by NuSTAR
1 INAF–Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna, via Ranzani 1, 40127 Bologna, Italy
e-mail: alberto.masini4@unibo.it
2 Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia (DIFA), Università di Bologna, viale Berti Pichat 6/2, 40127 Bologna, Italy
3 ASDC-ASI, via del Politecnico, 00133 Roma, Italy
4 INAF–Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, via Frascati 33, 00040 Monte Porzio Catone, Italy
5 Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
6 Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy, Department of Physics, University of Durham, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK
7 School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK
8 Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (JAXA), 3-1-1 Yoshinodai, Sagamihara, 252-5252 Kanagawa, Japan
9 European Space Astronomy Center of ESA, PO Box 78, Villanueva de la Cañada, 28691 Madrid, Spain
10 Instituto de Astrofísica and Centro de Astroingeniería, Facultad de Física, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Casilla 306, Santiago 22, Chile
11 Millennium Institute of Astrophysics (MAS), Nuncio Monseñor Sótero Sanz 100, Providencia, Santiago, Chile
12 Space Science Institute, 4750 Walnut Street, Suite 205, Boulder, Colorado 80301, USA
13 EMBIGGEN Anillo, Concepción, Chile
14 Space Science Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
15 DTU Space National Space Institute, Technical University of Denmark, Elektrovej 327, 2800 Lyngby, Denmark
16 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94550, USA
17 Department of Physics, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA
18 Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA
19 Institute for Astronomy, Department of Physics, ETH Zurich, Wolfgang-Pauli-Strasse 27, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland
20 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA
21 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA
22 Space Radiation Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
Received: 1 August 2016
Accepted: 1 September 2016
Aims. We study the long-term variability of the well-known Seyfert 2 galaxy Mrk 1210 (also known as UGC 4203, or the Phoenix galaxy).
Methods. The source was observed by many X-ray facilities in the last 20 yr. Here we present a NuSTAR observation and put the results in the context of previously published observations.
Results. NuSTAR observed Mrk 1210 in 2012 for 15.4 ks. The source showed Compton-thin obscuration similar to that observed by Chandra, Suzaku, BeppoSAX and XMM-Newton over the past two decades, but different from the first observation by ASCA in 1995, in which the active nucleus was caught in a low flux state or was obscured by Compton-thick matter with a reflection-dominated spectrum. Thanks to the high-quality hard X-ray spectrum obtained with NuSTAR and exploiting the long-term spectral coverage spanning 16.9 yr, we can precisely disentangle the transmission and reflection components and put constraints on both the intrinsic long-term variability and hidden nucleus scenarios. In the former case, the distance between the reflector and the source must be at least ~2 pc, while in the latter the eclipsing cloud may be identified with a water maser-emitting clump.
Key words: galaxies: active / galaxies: Seyfert / X-rays: galaxies
© ESO, 2017
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