35 research outputs found

    Chandra observation of two shock fronts in the merging galaxy cluster Abell 2146

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    We present a new Chandra observation of the galaxy cluster Abell 2146 which has revealed a complex merging system with a gas structure that is remarkably similar to the Bullet cluster. The X-ray image and temperature map show a cool 2 –3 keV subcluster with a ram pressure stripped tail of gas just exiting the disrupted 6 − 7 keV primary cluster. From the sharp jump in the temperature and density of the gas, we determine that the subcluster is preceded by a bow shock with a Mach number M= 2.2 ± 0.8, corresponding to a velocity v= 2200+1000−900 km s−1 relative to the main cluster. We estimate that the subcluster passed through the primary core only 0.1 –0.3 Gyr ago. In addition, we observe a slower upstream shock propagating through the outer region of the primary cluster and calculate a Mach number M= 1.7 ± 0.3. Based on the measured shock Mach numbers M∼ 2 and the strength of the upstream shock, we argue that the mass ratio between the two merging clusters is between 3 and 4 to one. By comparing the Chandra observation with an archival Hubble Space Telescope observation, we find that a group of galaxies is located in front of the X-ray subcluster core but the brightest cluster galaxy is located immediately behind the X-ray peak

    The Close AGN Reference Survey (CARS) A massive multi-phase outflow impacting the edge-on galaxy HE 1353-1917

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    Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Open Access funding provided by Max Planck Society.Context. Galaxy-wide outflows driven by star formation and/or an active galactic nucleus (AGN) are thought to play a crucial rule in the evolution of galaxies and the metal enrichment of the inter-galactic medium. Direct measurements of these processes are still scarce and new observations are needed to reveal the nature of outflows in the majority of the galaxy population. Aims. We combine extensive, spatially-resolved, multi-wavelength observations, taken as part of the Close AGN Reference Survey (CARS), for the edge-on disc galaxy HE 1353-1917 in order to characterise the impact of the AGN on its host galaxy via outflows and radiation. Methods. Multi-color broad-band photometry was combined with spatially-resolved optical, near-infrared (NIR) and sub-mm and radio observations taken with the Multi-Unit Spectroscopy Explorer (MUSE), the Near-infrared Integral Field Spectrometer (NIFS), the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), and the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to map the physical properties and kinematics of the multi-phase interstellar medium. Results. We detect a biconical extended narrow-line region ionised by the luminous AGN orientated nearly parallel to the galaxy disc, extending out to at least 25 kpc. The extra-planar gas originates from galactic fountains initiated by star formation processes in the disc, rather than an AGN outflow, as shown by the kinematics and the metallicity of the gas. Nevertheless, a fast, multi-phase, AGN-driven outflow with speeds up to 1000 km s(-1) is detected close to the nucleus at 1 kpc distance. A radio jet, in connection with the AGN radiation field, is likely responsible for driving the outflow as confirmed by the energetics and the spatial alignment of the jet and multi-phase outflow. Evidence for negative AGN feedback suppressing the star formation rate (SFR) is mild and restricted to the central kpc. But while any SFR suppression must have happened recently, the outflow has the potential to greatly impact the future evolution of the galaxy disc due to its geometrical orientation. Conclusions.. Our observations reveal that low-power radio jets can play a major role in driving fast, multi-phase, galaxy-scale outflows even in radio-quiet AGN. Since the outflow energetics for HE 1353-1917 are consistent with literature, scaling relation of AGN-driven outflows the contribution of radio jets as the driving mechanisms still needs to be systematically explored.© B. Husemann et al. 2019We thank the referee for providing very valuable comments, which significantly improved the quality of the manuscript. MK acknowledges support from DLR grant 50OR1802. GRT acknowledges support from the NASA through Einstein Postdoctoral Fellowship Award Number PF-150128, issued by the Chandra X-ray Observatory Center, which is operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for and on behalf of NASA under contract NAS8-03060. MG is supported by the Lyman Spitzer Jr. Fellowship (Princeton University) and by NASA Chandra grants GO7-18121X/GO8-19104X. SMC acknowledges support from the Australian Research Council (DP190102714). We thank Alex Markowitz for helpful discussions on the RGS data in the context of warm absorbers. The work of SAB, CPO and MS was supported by a generous grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. Based on observations collected at the European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere under ESO programme 095. B-0015(A). Based on observations obtained at the Gemini Observatory, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under a cooperative agreement with the NSF on behalf of the Gemini partnership: the National Science Foundation (United States), National Research Council (Canada), CONICYT (Chile), Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnologia e Innovacion Productiva (Argentina), Ministerio da Ciencia, Tecnologia e Inovacao (Brazil), and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (Republic of Korea). Based on observations obtained at the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) telescope, which is a joint project of the Ministerio da Ciencia, Tecnologia, Inovacoes e Comunicacoes (MCTIC) do Brasil, the U.S. National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), and Michigan State University (MSU). Based on observations collected at the German-Spanish Astronomical Center, Calar Alto, jointly operated by the Max-Planck-Institut fur Astronomie Heidelberg and the Instituto de Astrofiica de Andaluci (CSIC). This paper makes use of the following ALMA data: ADS/JAO.ALMA#2016.1.00952. S. ALMA is a partnership of ESO (representing its member states), NSF (USA) and NINS (Japan), together with NRC (Canada), MOST and ASIAA (Taiwan), and KASI (Republic of Korea), in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. The Joint ALMA Observatory is operated by ESO, AUI/NRAO and NAOJ. This work is based on observations obtained with XMM-Newton, an ESA science mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member States and NASA. The VLA is operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. Herschel is an ESA space observatory with science instruments provided by European-led Principal Investigator consortia and with important participation from NASA. This publication makes use of data products from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, which is a joint project of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Pan-STARRS1 Surveys (PS1) and the PS1 public science archive have been made possible through contributions by the Institute for Astronomy, the University of Hawaii, the Pan-STARRS Project Office, the Max-Planck Society and its participating institutes, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, The Johns Hopkins University, Durham University, the University of Edinburgh, the Queen's University Belfast, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network Incorporated, the National Central University of Taiwan, the Space Telescope Science Institute, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under Grant No. NNX08AR22G issued through the Planetary Science Division of the NASA Science Mission Directorate, the National Science Foundation Grant No. AST-1238877, the University of Maryland, Eotvos Lorand University (ELTE), the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. This work is based in part on observations made with the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX). GALEX is a NASA Small Explorer, whose mission was developed in cooperation with the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) of France and the Korean Ministry of Science and Technology. GALEX is operated for NASA by the California Institute of Technology under NASA contract NAS5-98034

    Evolution of Extragalactic Radio Sources

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    I review the current paradigm for extragalactic radio sources including their classification, relationship to their host galaxies, their environments, their propagation, and their lifetimes. I emphasize recent progress in our understanding of radio source evolution and I discuss the current open questions. In spite of the many outstanding questions, there remains the following "working" paradigm. Massive BHs are present in many (all?) bright galaxies. Activity is triggered when gas reaches the central accretion disk - possibly with the assistance of an interaction. The type of resultant activity depends on the fueling rate and BH properties (Mass and Spin) which in turn may be related to the host galaxy and its immediate environment. The radio jets in the classical doubles power an over-pressured cocoon which propagates through the ISM/ICM in a roughly self-similar way. The GPS and CSS sources are likely to be the young progenitors of the powerful large-scale radio sources and if so can be used to constrain their evolution. Current constraints imply that sources evolve with roughly constant expansion speed and decline in radio power with linear size as P ∝ l-0.5. Lifetimes of canonical powerful radio sources are in the range l06-8 yr (with the less powerful oncs living longer). Finally, activity may be repetitive

    Neutral hydrogen absorption in NGC 1068 and NGC 3079

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    Copyright American Astronomical Society [Full text of this article is not available in the UHRA]Peer reviewe

    H 2O and OH Masers as Probes of the Obscuring Torus in NGC 1068

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    Original article can be found at: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/ Copyright American Astronomical Society. DOI: 10.1086/177187 [Full text of this article is not available in the UHRA]We report the discovery of OH masers and positionally resolved H_2_O maser emission in the nucleus of NGC 1068. The brightest H_2_O masers are associated with the radio continuum component that is probably the location of the central engine (Gallimore, Muxlow, and coworkers). These masers trace a ~50 mas (~5 pc) roughly linear velocity gradient along P.A 94^deg^ +/- 4^deg^, which is almost at right angles to the local radio jet axis. The kinematics of the masers are well described as an edge-on Keplerian disk surrounding a large central mass concentration (black hole?). The inner radius of the maser disk is ~> 1.3 pc, and the outer radius is ~2.5 pc, assuming a distance of 22 Mpc. The mass within the inner radius, normalized to the best-fit disk parameters, is 4.4 x 10^7^ M_sun_ x (r_in_/1.3 pc) (ν_max_/378 km s^-1^)^2^. These masers might occur in the parsec-scale torus thought to obscure the central engine. Radio continuum emission fills the region interior to the H_2_O masers, in agreement with the prediction that the continuum emission is thermal free-free radiation from the inner face of the molecular torus (Gallimore and coworkers). The location of-the OH masers and nuclear H I absorption (Gallimore and coworkers), measured with ~1" angular resolution, is consistent with the location of the H_2_O masers associated with the central engine. The H I absorption profile is also consistent with the Keplerian model for the H_2_O maser disk kinematics, and the velocity range of the OH masers is similar to that spanned by both the H I and H_2_O spectral features. It therefore seems likely that the OH masers and H I absorption also originate in the obscuring material surrounding the central engine. The OH masers indicate the presence of a more tenuous molecular medium in the torus, in addition to the denser material traced by the H_2_O maser emission. We have also discovered fainter H_2_O masers located 0.3" (~30 pc) downstream along the radio jet. These masers are too distant from the central engine to arise in a parsec-scale torus. They may instead occur at the shock interface between the radio jet and an intervening molecular cloud. The implication is that H_2_O magamaser emission may probe both circumnuclear disks and shock fronts in other active galactic nuclei.Peer reviewe

    Estimating the Jet Power of Mrk 231 during the 2017-2018 Flare

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    Long-term 17.6 GHz radio monitoring of the broad absorption-line quasar, Mrk 231, detected a strong flare in late 2017. This triggered four epochs of Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) observations from 8.4 to 43 GHz over a 10 week period as well as an X-ray observation with NuSTAR. This was the third campaign of VLBA monitoring that we have obtained. The 43 GHz VLBA was degraded in all epochs, with only 7 of 10 antennas available in three epochs and 8 in the first epoch. However, useful results were obtained due to a fortuitous capturing of a complete, short 100 mJy flare at 17.6 GHz, both growth and decay. This provided useful constraints on the physical model of the ejected plasma that were not available in previous campaigns. We consider four classes of models: discrete ejections (both protonic and positronic) and jetted (protonic and positronic). The most viable model is a "dissipative bright knot" in a faint background leptonic jet with an energy flux ∼10 erg s. Inverse Compton scattering calculations (based on these models) in the ambient quasar photon field explains the lack of a detectable increase in X-ray luminosity measured by NuSTAR. We show that the core (the bright knot) moves toward a nearby secondary at ≈0.97c. The background jet is much fainter. Evidently, the high-frequency VLBA core does not represent the point of origin of blazar jets, in general, and optical depth "core shift" estimates of jet points of origin can be misleading.With funding from the Spanish government through the "María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence" accreditation (MDM-2017-0737
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