Accurate classification of 17 AGNs detected with Swift/BAT

Abstract

Through an optical campaign performed at 5 telescopes located in the northern and the southern hemispheres, plus archival data from two on line sky surveys, we have obtained optical spectroscopy for 17 counterparts of suspected or poorly studied hard X-ray emitting active galactic nuclei (AGNs) detected with Swift/BAT in order to determine or better classify their nature. We find that 7 sources of our sample are Type 1 AGNs, 9 are Type 2 AGNs, and 1 object is an X-ray bright optically normal galaxy; the redshifts of these objects lie in a range between 0.012 and 0.286. For all these sources, X-ray data analysis was also performed to estimate their absorption column and to search for possible Compton thick candidates. Among our type 2 objects, we did not find any clear Compton thick AGN, but at least 6 out of 9 of them are highly absorbed (N_H > 10^23 cm^-2), while one does not require intrinsic absorption; i.e., it appears to be a naked Seyfert 2 galaxy.

15 pages, 7 figures, 4 tables. Accepted for publication on Astronomy & Astrophysics, main journal. The name of the source Swift J0519.5-3140 corrected with Swift J0501.9-3239

References in corpus (24)

• A Cosmology Calculator for the World Wide Web
• The Fifth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The XMM-Newton Serendipitous Survey. V. The Second XMM-Newton Serendipitous Source Catalogue
• The 3rd IBIS/ISGRI soft gamma-ray survey catalog
• The first XMM-Newton slew survey catalogue: XMMSL1
• Swift BAT Survey of AGN
• Panchromatic study of GRB 060124: from precursor to afterglow
• The Molonglo Galactic Plane Survey (MGPS-2): Compact Source Catalogue
• INTEGRAL/IBIS all-sky survey in hard X-rays
• On the origin of soft X-rays in obscured AGN: answers from high-resolution spectroscopy with XMM-Newton
• Hard X-ray luminosity function and absorption distribution of nearby AGN: INTEGRAL all-sky survey
• Unveiling the nature of INTEGRAL objects through optical spectroscopy. V. Identification and properties of 21 southern hard X-ray sources
• The Toroidal Obscuration of Active Galactic Nuclei
• Unveiling the nature of INTEGRAL objects through optical spectroscopy. VI. A multi-observatory identification campaign
• X-ray properties of an Unbiased Hard X-ray Detected Sample of AGN
• BAT X-ray Survey - III: X-ray Spectra and Statistical Properties
• Unveiling the nature of INTEGRAL objects through optical spectroscopy. VII. Identification of 20 Galactic and extragalactic hard X-ray sources
• The Suzaku Observation of the Nucleus of the Radio-Loud Active Galaxy Centaurus A: Constraints on Abundances of the Accreting Material
• Swift-XRT observation of 34 new INTEGRAL/IBIS AGNs: discovery of Compton thick and other peculiar sources
• The Hard X-ray 20-40 keV AGN Luminosity Function
• NGC3147: a "true" Seyfert 2 without the broad-line region
• Unveiling the nature of INTEGRAL objects through optical spectroscopy. IV. A study of six new hard X-ray sources
• A deep INTEGRAL hard X-ray survey of the 3C 273/Coma region
• IGR J16351-5806: another close by Compton-thick AGN

Cited by in corpus (23)

• The 70 Month Swift-BAT All-Sky Hard X-Ray Survey
• BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey - V. X-ray properties of the Swift/BAT 70-month AGN catalog
• Three years Swift-BAT Survey of AGN: reconciling theory and observations?
• BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey I: Spectral Measurements, Derived Quantities, and AGN Demographics
• The subarcsecond mid-infrared view of local active galactic nuclei: II. The mid-infrared--X-ray correlation
• The subarcsecond mid-infrared view of local active galactic nuclei: I. The N- and Q-band imaging atlas
• Can we measure the accretion efficiency of Active Galactic Nuclei?
• Does the obscured AGN fraction really depend on luminosity?
• Suzaku View of the Swift/BAT Active Galactic Nuclei. III. Application of Numerical Torus Models to Two Nearly Compton Thick AGNs (NGC 612 and NGC 3081)
• Accurate classification of 75 counterparts of objects detected in the 54 month Palermo Swift/BAT hard X-ray catalogue
• Detection of faint broad emission lines in type 2 AGN: I. Near infrared observations and spectral fitting
• Accurate classification of 29 objects detected in the 39 months Palermo Swift/BAT hard X-ray catalogue
• Highly variable AGN from the XMM-Newton Slew Survey
• The nature of fifty Palermo Swift-BAT hard X-ray objects through optical spectroscopy
• WISDOM project -- XIV. SMBH mass in the early-type galaxies NGC0612, NGC1574, and NGC4261 from CO dynamical modelling
• A Full Characterisation of the Supermassive Black Hole in IRAS 09149-6206
• The Nancay HI Zone of Avoidance survey of 2MASS bright galaxies
• Where are Compton-thick radio galaxies? A hard X-ray view of three candidates
• Ca II triplet spectroscopy of RGB stars in NGC 6822: kinematics and metallicities
• Stellar population properties for a sample of hard X-ray AGNs
• Optical spectroscopic classification of 35 hard X-ray sources from the Swift-BAT 70-month catalogue
• A comparative analysis of Galactic extinction at low Galactic latitudes
• A changing-look AGN to be probed by X-ray polarimetry