A rapidly spinning supermassive black hole at the centre of NGC 1365
@article{Risaliti2013ARS, title={A rapidly spinning supermassive black hole at the centre of NGC 1365}, author={Guido Risaliti and Fiona A. Harrison and Kristin K. Madsen and Dominic J. Walton and Steven E. Boggs and F. E. Christensen and William W. Craig and Brian W. Grefenstette and Charles James Hailey and Emanuele Nardini and Daniel Stern and W. W. Zhang}, journal={Nature}, year={2013}, volume={494}, pages={449-451} }
Broad X-ray emission lines from neutral and partially ionized iron observed in active galaxies have been interpreted as fluorescence produced by the reflection of hard X-rays off the inner edge of an accretion disk. In this model, line broadening and distortion result from rapid rotation and relativistic effects near the black hole, the line shape being sensitive to its spin. Alternative models in which the distortions result from absorption by intervening structures provide an equally good…
221 Citations
Probing the origin of the iron Kα line around stellar and supermassive black holes using X-ray polarimetry
- Physics
- 2014
Light bending and X-ray echoes from behind a supermassive black hole.
- PhysicsNature
- 2021
Observations of X-ray flares emitted from around the supermassive black hole in I Zw 1 confirm a key prediction of general relativity.
Revealing the accretion disc corona in Mrk 335 with multi-epoch X-ray spectroscopy
- Physics
- 2016
Active galactic nuclei host an accretion disc with an X-ray producing corona around a supermassive black hole. In bright sources, such as the Seyfert 1 galaxy Mrk 335, reflection of the coronal…
Inferring black hole spins and probing accretion/ejection flows in AGNs with the Athena X-ray Integral Field Unit
- PhysicsAstronomy & Astrophysics
- 2019
Context. Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) display complex X-ray spectra that exhibit a variety of emission and absorption features. These are commonly interpreted as a combination of (i) a…
NUSTAR AND SUZAKU X-RAY SPECTROSCOPY OF NGC 4151: EVIDENCE FOR REFLECTION FROM THE INNER ACCRETION DISK
- Physics
- 2015
We present X-ray timing and spectral analyses of simultaneous 150 ks Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) and Suzaku X-ray observations of the Seyfert 1.5 galaxy NGC 4151. We disentangle…
Improved Reflection Models of Black Hole Accretion Disks: Treating the Angular Distribution of X-Rays
- Physics
- 2014
X-ray reflection models are used to constrain the properties of the accretion disk, such as the degree of ionization of the gas and the elemental abundances. In combination with general relativistic…
A new way to measure supermassive black hole spin in accretion disc dominated Active Galaxies
- Physics
- 2013
We show that disc continuum fitting can be used to constrain black hole spin in a subclass of narrow-line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) active galactic nuclei as their low mass and high mass accretion rate means…
THE HARD X-RAY SPECTRUM OF NGC 1365: SCATTERED LIGHT, NOT BLACK HOLE SPIN
- Physics
- 2013
Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) show excess X-ray emission above 10 keV compared with extrapolation of spectra from lower energies. Risaliti et al. have recently attempted to model the hard X-ray…
A New Approach to Constrain Black Hole Spins in Active Galaxies Using Optical Reverberation Mapping
- Physics
- 2014
A tight relation between the size of the broad-line region (BLR) and optical luminosity has been established in about 50 active galactic nuclei studied through reverberation mapping of the broad…
Constraints on the Neutron Star and Inner Accretion Flow in Serpens X-1 Using NuSTAR
- Physics
- 2013
We report on an observation of the neutron star low-mass X-ray binary Serpens X-1, made with NuSTAR. The extraordinary sensitivity afforded by NuSTAR facilitated the detection of a clear, robust,…
References
SHOWING 1-10 OF 29 REFERENCES
Constraining Black Hole Spin via X-Ray Spectroscopy
- Physics
- 2006
We present an analysis of the observed broad iron line feature and putative warm absorber in the long 2001 XMM-Newton observation of the Seyfert 1.2 galaxy MCG -06-30-15. The new kerrdisk model we…
Broad Iron-Kα Emission Lines as a Diagnostic of Black Hole Spin
- Physics
- 2008
We address the ability of broad iron emission lines from black hole accretion disks to diagnose the spin of the black hole. Using a high-resolution three-dimensional MHD simulation of a geometrically…
Suzaku observations of 'bare' active galactic nuclei
- Physics
- 2013
We present an X-ray spectral analysis of a large sample of 25 ‘bare’ active galactic nuclei (AGN), sources with little or no complicating intrinsic absorption, observed with Suzaku. Our work focuses…
A light bending model for the X-ray temporal and spectral properties of accreting black holes
- Physics
- 2004
Some of the X-ray temporal and spectral properties of accreting black holes represent a challenge for current theoretical models. In particular, uncorrelated variability between direct continuum and…
Relativistic Broadening of Iron Emission Lines in a Sample of Active Galactic Nuclei
- Physics
- 2009
We present a uniform X-ray spectral analysis of eight type-1 active galactic nuclei that have been previously observed with relativistically broadened iron emission lines. Utilizing data from the…
IMAGING THE CIRCUMNUCLEAR REGION OF NGC 1365 WITH CHANDRA
- Physics
- 2009
We present the first Chandra/ACIS imaging study of the circumnuclear region of the nearby Seyfert galaxy NGC 1365. The X-ray emission is resolved into pointlike sources and complex, extended…
Explaining the hard excesses in active galactic nuclei
- Physics
- 2010
A common model invoked to describe the X-ray spectra of active galaxies includes a relativistically blurred reflection component, which in some cases can be the dominant contributor to the received…
Broad line emission from iron K- and L-shell transitions in the active galaxy 1H 0707-495
- PhysicsNature
- 2009
The combination of spectral and timing data on 1H 0707-495 provides strong evidence that the authors are witnessing emission from matter within a gravitational radius, or a fraction of a light minute, from the event horizon of a rapidly spinning, massive black hole.
Occultation Measurement of the Size of the X-Ray-emitting Region in the Active Galactic Nucleus of NGC 1365
- Physics
- 2007
We present an occultation of the central X-ray-emitting region in the Seyfert galaxy NGC 1365. This extreme spectral variation (from Compton-thin to reflection-dominated and back to Compton-thin in 4…
“Comets” orbiting a black hole
- Physics
- 2010
We use a long (300 ks), continuous Suzaku X-ray observation of the active nucleus in NGC 1365 to investigate the structure of the circumnuclear broad line region (BLR) clouds through their…