Recent X-ray surveys have shown a dramatic deficit of obscured AGN at highredshift. This comes in contrast with the situation in the nearby Universe whichshows a huge fraction of heavily absorbed objects. However, this discrepancy mayarise because the column density information locally is ill-determined. Here, wepropose to obtain snapshot (10 ksec) observations of an optically selectedsample (12) of nearby Seyfert galaxies from the Ho et al.catalogue. Togetherwith the galaxies which have been already observed, our survey will cover ALLthe Sy galaxies in the above sample. The superb quality XMM-Newton spectra willaccurately probe the column densities and will provide the least biasedmeasurement of the AGN column density distribution locally.
Instrument
EMOS1, EMOS2, EPN, OM, RGS1, RGS2
Temporal Coverage
2005-04-02T20:02:06Z/2006-06-21T01:40:26Z
Version
17.56_20190403_1200
Mission Description
The European Space Agencys (ESA) X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission (XMM-Newton) was launched by an Ariane 504 on December 10th 1999. XMM-Newton is ESAs second cornerstone of the Horizon 2000 Science Programme. It carries 3 high throughput X-ray telescopes with an unprecedented effective area, and an optical monitor, the first flown on a X-ray observatory. The large collecting area and ability to make long uninterrupted exposures provide highly sensitive observations. Since Earths atmosphere blocks out all X-rays, only a telescope in space can detect and study celestial X-ray sources. The XMM-Newton mission is helping scientists to solve a number of cosmic mysteries, ranging from the enigmatic black holes to the origins of the Universe itself. Observing time on XMM-Newton is being made available to the scientific community, applying for observational periods on a competitive basis.
European Space Agency, Dr Ioannis Georgantopoulos, 2008, 'Xray Observations of optically selected Seyfert Galaxies', 17.56_20190403_1200, European Space Agency, https://doi.org/10.5270/esa-sjrh1uz
