Measuring the Obscuring Column of a Disk Megamaser AGN in a Nearby Merger

Abstract

Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) hosting disk water megamasers are well known to be obscured by large amounts of gas, likely due to the presence along the line of sight of an almost edge-on disky structure orbiting the supermassive black hole. Correcting for the high obscuration is crucial to infer parameters intrinsic to the source, like its luminosity. We present a broadband X-ray spectral analysis of a water megamaser AGN in an early merger (NGC 5765B), combining Chandra and NuSTAR data. NGC 5765B is highly Compton-thick and reflection-dominated, following the general trend among disk megamasers. Combining the exquisite black hole mass from masers with our X-ray spectroscopy, the Eddington ratio of the megamaser is estimated to be in the $2-14\%$ range, and its robustness is confirmed through SED fitting.

10 pages, 8 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (19)

• A simple model to interpret the ultraviolet, optical and infrared emission from galaxies
• The bulk of the black hole growth since z~1 occurs in a secular universe: No major merger-AGN connection
• X-ray spectral properties of AGN in the Chandra Deep Field South
• BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey I: Spectral Measurements, Derived Quantities, and AGN Demographics
• New Spectral Model for Constraining Torus Covering Factors from Broadband X-ray Spectra of Active Galactic Nuclei
• Growing supermassive black holes in the late stages of galaxy mergers are heavily obscured
• Growth and activity of black holes in galaxy mergers with varying mass ratios
• Merging and Clustering of the Swift BAT AGN Sample
• The 2-79 keV X-ray Spectrum of the Circinus Galaxy with NuSTAR, XMM-Newton and Chandra: a Fully Compton-Thick AGN
• A population of luminous accreting black holes with hidden mergers
• Prevalence of High X-ray Obscuring Columns among AGN that Host H${}_2$O Masers
• Discovery of Kiloparsec Extended Hard X-ray Continuum and Fe K alpha from the Compton Thick AGN ESO428-G014
• The Megamaser Cosmology Project.IX. Black hole masses for three maser galaxies
• X-ray bolometric corrections for Compton-thick active galactic nuclei
• A growth-rate indicator for Compton-thick active galactic nuclei
• IC 3639 - A new bona fide Compton thick AGN unveiled by NuSTAR
• Enhancing the H2O Megamaser Detection Rate Using Optical and Mid-infrared Photometry
• A long hard-X-ray look at the dual active galactic nuclei of M51 with NuSTAR
• Measuring supermassive black hole peculiar motion using H${}_2$O megamasers

Cited by in corpus (8)

• LeMMINGs IV: The X-ray properties of a statistically-complete sample of the nuclei in active and inactive galaxies from the Palomar sample
• AGN populations in the local universe: their alignment with the main-sequence, characteristics of their stellar populations, accretion efficiency, and the impact of AGN feedback
• A comprehensive X-ray view of the active nucleus in NGC 4258
• Spectropolarimetric measurements of hidden broad lines in nearby megamaser galaxies: a lack of clear evidence for a correlation between black hole masses and virial products
• A new distant Giant Radio Galaxy in the Boötes field serendipitously detected by Chandra
• Toward measuring the spin of obscured supermassive black holes: a critical assessment with disk megamasers
• Accretion-disk reflection in the Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 3783 as viewed by Chandra grating spectroscopy
• A broadband X-ray study of a sample of AGNs with [OIII] measured inclinations