Transmission- to Reflection-dominated Transition in Seyfert 2 Galaxies: the XMM-Newton View

Guainazzi, M.; Rodriguez-Pascual, P.; Fabian, A. C.; Iwasawa, K.; Matt, G.; Fiore, F.
Bibliographical reference

MULTIWAVELENGTH AGN SURVEYS. Proceedings of the Guillermo Haro Conference 2003. Held 8-12 December 2003 in Cozumel, Mexico. Edited by Raúl Mújica (Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica, Mexico) & Roberto Maiolino (INAF-Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, Italy). Published by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., 2004. ISBN #9789812702432, pp. 239-242

Advertised on:
10
2004
Number of authors
6
IAC number of authors
0
Citations
1
Refereed citations
1
Description
In this paper we present the current status of a XMM-Newton program to observe an optically-defined, complete and unbiased sample of Compton-thick Seyfert 2 galaxies. The main goal of this project is the measurement of the occurrence rate of transition between transmission- (i.e. Compton-thin), and reflection-dominated spectral states. These transitions potentially provide information on the distribution of the obscuring matter surrounding the nucleus, and on the duty-cycle of the AGN activity. With about 2/3 of the whole sample being observed, we detected 1 further transition out of 8 observed objects, confirming previous suggestions that these transitions occur on time-scales ~50-100 years.