Chandra ACIS Survey for X-Ray AGN in Nearby Galaxies
Short Name:
CHANSNGCAT
Date:
07 Mar 2025
Publisher:
NASA/GSFC HEASARC
Description:
The authors searched the public archive of the Chandra X-ray Observatory as of 2016 March and assembled a sample of 719 galaxies within 50 Mpc with available Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer observations. By cross-correlation with the optical or near-infrared nuclei of these galaxies, 314 of them are identified to have an X-ray active galactic nucleus (AGN). The majority of them are low-luminosity AGNs and are unlikely X-ray binaries based upon their spatial distribution and luminosity functions. The AGN fraction is around 60% for elliptical galaxies and early-type spirals, but drops to roughly 20% for Sc and later types, consistent with previous findings in the optical. However, the X-ray survey is more powerful in finding weak AGNs, especially from regions with active star formation that may mask the optical AGN signature. For example, 31% of the H II nuclei are found to harbor an X-ray AGN. For most objects, a single power-law model subject to interstellar absorption is adequate to fit the spectrum, and the typical photon index is found to be around 1.8. For galaxies with a non-detection, their stacked Chandra image shows an X-ray excess with a luminosity of a few times 10<sup>37</sup> erg/s on average around the nuclear region, possibly composed of faint X-ray binaries. This paper reports on the technique and results of the survey; in-depth analysis and discussion of the results were to be reported in forthcoming papers, e.g., She et al. (2017, ApJ, 842, 131). The sample was assembled based on Chandra/ACIS observations that were publicly available as of 2016 March. The authors first generated a full list of ACIS observations, and then searched in the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) for galaxies within 50 Mpc whose nuclear positions were less than 8 arcminutes from the aim point of any Chandra observation. The adopted distances were taken from NED, in the following order of priority: surface brightness fluctuations, Cepheid variables, tip of the red giant branch, Type Ia supernovae, the fundamental plane, Faber-Jackson relation, Tully-Fisher relation. If more than one reference is available for the distance by the same means, the latest one is selected, unless otherwise specified. Whenever possible, the authors obtain positions of the galaxy nuclei based on measurements from near-infrared images, which suffer from less obscuration by dust or confusion from young star-forming regions. Most of the data come from the Two-Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) extended source catalog (Skrutskie et al. 2006, AJ, 131, 1163), or NED otherwise. In a few cases, the NED positions come from radio observations. The authors discarded galaxies whose nuclear positions in NED were obtained from X-ray observations. This table was created by the HEASARC in September 2017 based upon the <a href="https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/ftp/cats/J/ApJ/835/223">CDS Catalog J/ApJ/835/223</a> files table1.dat, table2.dat and table4.dat. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .
