Compton-Thick AGN in the NuSTAR era VII. A joint NuSTAR, Chandra and XMM-Newton analysis of two nearby, heavily obscured sources

• Published in: arXiv.org 2021-09
• Main Authors: Traina, Alberto, Marchesi, Stefano, Vignali, Cristian, Torres-Albà, Núria, Ajello, Marco, Pizzetti, Andrealuna, Silver, Ross, Zhao, Xiurui, Tonima, Tasnim Ananna, Baloković, Mislav, Boorman, Peter, Gandhi, Poshak, Gilli, Roberto, Lanzuisi, Giorgio
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Active galactic nuclei; Red shift; Seyfert galaxies; Spectrum analysis; XMM (spacecraft)
• ISSN: 2331-8422
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2109.00572

We present the joint Chandra, XMM-Newton and NuSTAR analysis of two nearby Seyfert galaxies, NGC 3081 and ESO 565-G019. These are the only two having Chandra data in a larger sample of ten low redshift (\(z \le 0.05\)), candidates Compton-thick Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) selected in the 15-150 keV band with Swift-BAT that were still lacking NuSTAR data. Our spectral analysis, performed using physically-motivated models, provides an estimate of both the line-of-sight (l.o.s.) and average (N\(_{H,S}\)) column densities of the two torii. NGC 3081 has a Compton-thin l.o.s. column density N\(_{H,z}\)=[0.58-0.62] \(\times 10^{24}\)cm\(^{-2}\), but the N\(_{H,S}\), beyond the Compton-thick threshold (N\(_{H,S}\)=[1.41-1.78] \(\times 10^{24}\)cm\(^{-2}\)), suggests a "patchy" scenario for the distribution of the circumnuclear matter. ESO 565-G019 has both Compton-thick l.o.s. and N\(_{H,S}\) column densities (N\(_{H,z}>\)2.31 \(\times 10^{24}\)cm\(^{-2}\) and N\(_{H,S} >\)2.57 \(\times 10^{24}\)cm\(^{-2}\), respectively). The use of physically-motivated models, coupled with the broad energy range covered by the data (0.6-70 keV and 0.6-40 keV, for NGC 3081 and ESO 565-G019, respectively) allows us to constrain the covering factor of the obscuring material, which is C\(_{TOR}\)=[0.63-0.82] for NGC 3081, and C\(_{TOR}\)=[0.39-0.65] for ESO 565-G019.