Long-term X-ray variability characteristics of the narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxy RE J1034+396

We present the results of our study of the long-term X-ray variability characteristics of the narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxy RE J1034+396. We use data obtained from the AstroSat satellite along with light curves obtained from XMM–Newton and Swift–XRT. We use the 0.3–7.0 keV and 3–20 keV data, respectively, from the SXT and the LAXPC of AstroSat. The X-ray spectra in the 0.3–20 keV region are well fitted with a model consisting of a power law and a soft excess described by a thermal Compton emission with a large optical depth, consistent with the earlier reported results. We have examined the X-ray light curves in the soft and hard X-ray bands of the SXT and LAXPC, respectively, and find that the variability is slightly larger in the hard band. To investigate the variability characteristics of this source at different time-scales, we have used X-ray light curves obtained from XMM–Newton data (200 s to 100 ks range) and Swift–XRT data (1 to 100 d range) and find that there is evidence to suggest that the variability increases sharply at longer time-scales. We argue that the mass of the black hole in RE J1034+396 is likely to be ∼3 × 10^6 M⊙, based on the similarity of the observed quasi-periodic oscillation (QPO) to the high-frequency QPO seen in the galactic black hole binary GRS 1915+105

Introducing the CTA concept

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is a new observatory for very high-energy (VHE) gamma rays. CTA has ambitions science goals, for which it is necessary to achieve full-sky coverage, to improve the sensitivity by about an order of magnitude, to span about four decades of energy, from a few tens of GeV to above 100 TeV with enhanced angular and energy resolutions over existing VHE gamma-ray observatories. An international collaboration has formed with more than 1000 members from 27 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and North and South America. In 2010 the CTA Consortium completed a Design Study and started a three-year Preparatory Phase which leads to production readiness of CTA in 2014. In this paper we introduce the science goals and the concept of CTA, and provide an overview of the project