Velocity-resolved Reverberation Mapping of Five Bright Seyfert 1 Galaxies

We present the first results from a reverberation-mapping campaign undertaken during the first half of 2012, with additional data on one active galactic nucleus (AGN) (NGC 3227) from a 2014 campaign. Our main goals are (1) to determine the black hole masses from continuum-Hβ reverberation signatures, and (2) to look for velocity-dependent time delays that might be indicators of the gross kinematics of the broad-line region. We successfully measure Hβ time delays and black hole masses for five AGNs, four of which have previous reverberation mass measurements. The values measured here are in agreement with earlier estimates, though there is some intrinsic scatter beyond the formal measurement errors. We observe velocity-dependent Hβ lags in each case, and find that the patterns have changed in the intervening five years for three AGNs that were also observed in 2007.G.D.R., C.J.G., B.M.P., and R.W.P. are grateful for the support of the National Science Foundation through grant AST-1008882 to The Ohio State University. K.D.D., B.J.S., C.B.H., and J.L.V. acknowledge support by NSF Fellowships. M.C.B. gratefully acknowledges support from the NSF through CAREER grant AST-1253702. A.M.M. and D.M.S. acknowledge the support of NSF grants AST-1004756 and AST1009756. C.S.K. is supported by NSF grant AST-1515876. S.K. is supported at the Technion by the Kitzman Fellowship and by a grant from the Israel-Niedersachsen collaboration program. S.R. is supported at Technion by the Zeff Fellowship. S.G.S. acknowledges the support to CrAO in the frame of the “CosmoMicroPhysics” Target Scientific Research Complex Programme of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (2007–2012). M.V. gratefully acknowledges support from the Danish Council for Independent Research via grant no. DFF 4002-00275. V.T.D. acknowledges the support of the Russian Foundation of Research (RF project no. 12-02-01237-a). The CrAO CCD cameras were purchased through the US Civilian Research and Development for Independent States of the Former Soviet Union (CRDF) awards UP1-2116 and UP1- 2549-CR-03. This research has been partly supported by the Grants-in-Aid of Scientific Research (17104002, 20041003, 21018003, 21018005, 22253002, and 22540247) of the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports of Japan. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administratio

The cepheid distance to the seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 4151

We derive a distance of 15.8 +- 0.4 Mpc to the archetypal Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 4151 based on the near-infrared Cepheid period-luminosity relation and new Hubble Space Telescope multiband imaging. This distance determination, based on measurements of 35 long-period (P > 25 days) Cepheids, will support the absolute calibration of the supermassive black hole mass in this system, as well as studies of the dynamics of the feedback or feeding of its active galactic nucleus.Support for HST program GO-13765 was provided by NASA through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. MV gratefully acknowledges support from the Independent Research Fund Denmark via grant number DFF 8021-00130

Astronomical Distance Determination in the Space Age: Secondary Distance Indicators

The formal division of the distance indicators into primary and secondary leads to difficulties in description of methods which can actually be used in two ways: with, and without the support of the other methods for scaling. Thus instead of concentrating on the scaling requirement we concentrate on all methods of distance determination to extragalactic sources which are designated, at least formally, to use for individual sources. Among those, the Supernovae Ia is clearly the leader due to its enormous success in determination of the expansion rate of the Universe. However, new methods are rapidly developing, and there is also a progress in more traditional methods. We give a general overview of the methods but we mostly concentrate on the most recent developments in each field, and future expectations. © 2018, The Author(s)

Space Telescope and Optical Reverberation Mapping Project. VII. Understanding the Ultraviolet Anomaly in NGC 5548 with X-Ray Spectroscopy

During the Space Telescope and Optical Reverberation Mapping Project observations of NGC 5548, the continuum and emission-line variability became decorrelated during the second half of the six-month-long observing campaign. Here we present Swift and Chandra X-ray spectra of NGC 5548 obtained as part of the campaign. The Swift spectra show that excess flux (relative to a power-law continuum) in the soft X-ray band appears before the start of the anomalous emission-line behavior, peaks during the period of the anomaly, and then declines. This is a model-independent result suggesting that the soft excess is related to the anomaly. We divide the Swift data into on- and off-anomaly spectra to characterize the soft excess via spectral fitting. The cause of the spectral differences is likely due to a change in the intrinsic spectrum rather than to variable obscuration or partial covering. The Chandra spectra have lower signal-to-noise ratios, but are consistent with the Swift data. Our preferred model of the soft excess is emission from an optically thick, warm Comptonizing corona, the effective optical depth of which increases during the anomaly. This model simultaneously explains all three observations: the UV emission-line flux decrease, the soft-excess increase, and the emission-line anomaly

Three short-period Jupiters from TESS: HIP 65Ab, TOI-157b, and TOI-169b

We report the confirmation and mass determination of three hot Jupiters discovered by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission: HIP 65Ab (TOI-129, TIC-201248411) is an ultra-short-period Jupiter orbiting a bright (V = 11.1 mag) K4-dwarf every 0.98 days. It is a massive 3.213 ± 0.078 MJ planet in a grazing transit configuration with an impact parameter of b = 1.17-0.08+0.10. As a result the radius is poorly constrained, 2.03-0.49+0.61RJ. The planet's distance to its host star is less than twice the separation at which it would be destroyed by Roche lobe overflow. It is expected to spiral into HIP 65A on a timescale ranging from 80 Myr to a few gigayears, assuming a reduced tidal dissipation quality factor of Qs′ = 107 - 109. We performed a full phase-curve analysis of the TESS data and detected both illumination- and ellipsoidal variations as well as Doppler boosting. HIP 65A is part of a binary stellar system, with HIP 65B separated by 269 AU (3.95 arcsec on sky). TOI-157b (TIC 140691463) is a typical hot Jupiter with a mass of 1.18 ± 0.13 MJ and a radius of 1.29 ± 0.02 RJ. It has a period of 2.08 days, which corresponds to a separation of just 0.03 AU. This makes TOI-157 an interesting system, as the host star is an evolved G9 sub-giant star (V = 12.7). TOI-169b (TIC 183120439) is a bloated Jupiter orbiting a V = 12.4 G-type star. It has a mass of 0.79 ±0.06 MJ and a radius of 1.09-0.05+0.08RJ. Despite having the longest orbital period (P = 2.26 days) of the three planets, TOI-169b receives the most irradiation and is situated on the edge of the Neptune desert. All three host stars are metal rich with [Fe / H] ranging from 0.18 to0.24

Space telescope and optical reverberation mapping project. III. Optical continuum emission and broadband time delays in NGC 5548

We present ground-based optical photometric monitoring data for NGC 5548, part of an extended multiwavelength reverberation mapping campaign. The light curves have nearly daily cadence from 2014 January to July in nine filters (BVRI and ugriz). Combined with ultraviolet data from the Hubble Space Telescope and Swift, we confirm significant time delays between the continuum bands as a function of wavelength, extending the wavelength coverage from 1158 Å to the z band (~9160 Å). We find that the lags at wavelengths longer than the V band are equal to or greater than the lags of high-ionization-state emission lines (such as He II λ1640$ and λ 4686), suggesting that the continuum-emitting source is of a physical size comparable to the inner broad-line region (BLR). The trend of lag with wavelength is broadly consistent with the prediction for continuum reprocessing by an accretion disk with γ α λ4/3. However, the lags also imply a disk radius that is 3 times larger than the prediction from standard thin-disk theory, assuming that the bolometric luminosity is 10% of the Eddington luminosity (L = 0.1LEdd). Using optical spectra from the Large Binocular Telescope, we estimate the bias of the interband continuum lags due to BLR emission observed in the filters. We find that the bias for filters with high levels of BLR contamination (~20%) can be important for the shortest continuum lags and likely has a significant impact on the u and U bands owing to Balmer continuum emission

The Cepheid Distance to the Narrow-line Seyfert 1 Galaxy NGC 4051

We derive a distance of D = 16.6 ± 0.3 Mpc (μ = 31.10 ± 0.04 mag) to the archetypal narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 4051 based on Cepheid period-luminosity relations and new Hubble Space Telescope multiband imaging. We identify 419 Cepheid candidates and estimate the distance at both optical and near-infrared wavelengths using subsamples of precisely photometered variables (123 and 47 in the optical and near-infrared subsamples, respectively). We compare our independent photometric procedures and distance-estimation methods to those used by the Supernovae, H0, for the Equation of State team and find agreement to 0.01 mag. The distance we obtain suggests an Eddington ratio of ˙m ≈ 0.2 for NGC 4051, typical of narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies, unlike the seemingly odd value implied by previous distance estimates. We derive a peculiar velocity of -490 ± 34 km s-1 for NGC 4051, consistent with the overall motion of the Ursa Major Cluster in which it resides. We also revisit the energetics of the NGC 4051 nucleus, including its outflow and mass accretion rates. © 2021. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.Immediate accessThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

X-ray/UV/optical variability of NGC 4593 with Swift: reprocessing of X-rays by an extended reprocessor

We report the results of intensive X-ray, UV, and optical monitoring of the Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 4593 with Swift. There is no intrinsic flux-related spectral change in any variable component with small apparent variations being due to contamination by a constant hard (reflection) component in the X-rays and the red host galaxy in the UV/optical. Relative to the shortest wavelength band, UVW2, the lags of the other UV/optical bands mostly agree with the predictions of reprocessing of high energy emission by an accretion disc. The U-band lag is, however, larger than expected, probably because of reprocessed Balmer continuum emission from the distant broad line region (BLR). The UVW2 band is well correlated with the X-rays but lags by ∼6× more than expected if the UVW2 results only from reprocessing of X-rays by the disc. However, if the light curves are filtered to remove variations on time-scales >5 d, the lag approaches the expectation from disc reprocessing. MEMECHO analysis shows that direct X-rays can be the driver of most of the UV/optical variations if the response functions have tails up to 10 d, from BLR reprocessing, together with strong peaks at short lag (<1 d) from disc reprocessing. For the 5 AGN monitored so far, the observed UVW2 to V-band lags are ∼<2 of disc reprocessing expectations and vary little between AGN. However, the X-ray to UVW2 lags greatly exceed disc reprocessing expectations and differ between AGN. The two most absorbed AGN have the largest excesses, so absorption and scattering may affect these lags, but there is no simple relationship between excess and absorption