Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
1999-04-05
AIP Conf.Proc. 599 (1999) 758-761
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
15pages for text and tables. 13pages for figures
Scientific paper
An X-ray spectrum of the famous starburst galaxy M82 consists of three components: soft, medium, and hard components (Tsuru et al. 1997). The spectrum of the hard component, which is spatially unresolved, is well represented by an absorbed thermal bremsstrahlung, or an absorbed power-law model. However the origin of the hard component was unclear. Thus, we made a monitoring observation with ASCA in 1996. Although the X-ray flux of the soft and medium components remained constant, a significant time variability of the hard component was found between $3\times10^{40}$ erg/s and $1\times10^{41}$ erg/s at various time scales from 10 ks to a month. The temperature or photon index of the hard component also changed. We proved that the spatial position of the hard component is the center of M82. The spectrum of the variable source obtained by subtracting the spectrum of the lowest state from the highest state suggests the strong absorption of $N_{\rm H} \sim 10^{22}$ cm$^2$, which means the variable source is embedded in the center of M82. All these suggest that a low-luminosity AGN exists in M82.
Go Tsuru Takeshi
Matsumoto Haru
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