ESA Science & Technology - The early stage of a cosmic collision? XMM-Newton unveils two obscured AGN in the galaxy pair ESO509-IG066

Publication date: 03 January 2005

Authors: Guainazzi, M., et al.

Journal: Astronomy & Astrophysics
Volume: 429
Issue: I
Page: 9
Year: 2005

Copyright: ESO

We report the XMM-Newton discovery of a X-ray bright AGN pair in the interacting galaxy system ESO509-IG066. Both galaxies host an X-ray luminous (L_X ~ 10⁴³ erg/s) obscured nucleus with column densities N_H ~ 7x10²² and N_H ~ 5 x 10²¹ atoms.cm^-2. The optical morphology is only mildly disturbed, suggesting a merging system in the early stage of its evolution. Still, the pair is probably gravitationally bound, and might eventually evolve into a compact, fully gas embedded systems such as NGC6240.