INVESTIGATING THE NUCLEAR ACTIVITY OF BARRED SPIRAL GALAXIES: THE CASE OF NGC 1672
- Laboratory for X-ray Astrophysics, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 662, Greenbelt, MD 20771 (United States)
- Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802 (United States)
- Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218 (United States)
- CSIRO, Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF), Epping, NSW 1710 (Australia)
- Department of Physics, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL (United Kingdom)
- NVI/United States Naval Observatory, Washington, DC 20392 (United States)
- Department of Physics, Durham University, Durham DH1 3LE (United Kingdom)
- Department of Physics, University of Crete, GR-71003 Heraklion (Greece)
We have performed an X-ray study of the nearby barred spiral galaxy NGC 1672, primarily to ascertain the effect of the bar on its nuclear activity. We use both Chandra and XMM-Newton observations to investigate its X-ray properties, together with supporting high-resolution optical imaging data from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), infrared imaging from the Spitzer Space Telescope, and Australia Telescope Compact Array ground-based radio data. We detect 28 X-ray sources within the D{sub 25} area of the galaxy; many are spatially correlated with star formation in the bar and spiral arms, and two are identified as background galaxies in the HST images. Nine of the X-ray sources are ultraluminous X-ray sources, with the three brightest (L{sub X} > 5 x 10{sup 39} erg s{sup -1}) located at the ends of the bar. With the spatial resolution of Chandra, we are able to show for the first time that NGC 1672 possesses a hard ({Gamma} {approx} 1.5) nuclear X-ray source with a 2-10 keV luminosity of 4 x 10{sup 38} erg s{sup -1}. This is surrounded by an X-ray-bright circumnuclear star-forming ring, comprised of point sources and hot gas, which dominates the 2-10 keV emission in the central region of the galaxy. The spatially resolved multiwavelength photometry indicates that the nuclear source is a low-luminosity active galactic nucleus (LLAGN), but with star formation activity close to the central black hole. A high-resolution multiwavelength survey is required to fully assess the impact of both large-scale bars and smaller-scale phenomena such as nuclear bars, rings, and nuclear spirals on the fueling of LLAGN.
- OSTI ID:
- 21576663
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 734, Issue 1; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/734/1/33; ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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