CGRO BATSE-Observed Piccinotti Sample of Active Galactic Nuclei
Short Name:
GRO/Piccinott
Date:
10 May 2024
Publisher:
NASA/GSFC HEASARC
Description:
Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (CGRO) BATSE Earth-occultation data have been used by Malizia et al. (1999, ApJ, 519, 637) to search for emission in the 20-100 keV band from all sources in the Piccinotti sample (Piccinotti et al. 1982, ApJ, 253, 485: the HEASARC A2PIC database), which represents the only complete 20-10 keV survey to date of the extragalactic sky down to a limiting flux of 3.1 x 10<sup>-11</sup> ergs cm<sup>-2</sup> s<sup>-1</sup>. Nearly 4 years of observations have been analyzed to reach a 5-sigma confidence level of about 7.8 x 10<sup>-11</sup> ergs cm<sup>-2</sup> s<sup>-1</sup> in the band considered. Of the 36 sources in the sample, 14 have been detected above the 5-sigma confidence level, while marginal detection (3 <= sigma <= 5) can be claimed for 13 sources; for nine objects, 2 sigma upper limits are reported. A comparison of BATSE results with data at higher energies is used to estimate the robustness of the data analysis. While the detection level of each source is reliable, the flux measurement may be overestimated in some sources by as much as 35%, probably because of incomplete data cleaning. Comparison of BATSE fluxes with X-ray fluxes obtained in the 2-10 keV range and averaged over years indicates that a canonical power law of photon index 1.7 gives a good description of the broadband spectra of bright active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and that spectral breaks preferentially occur above 100 keV. This HEASARC database was created in October 1999 based primarily on Table 1 of Malizia et al. (1999), together with the positions and HEAO-1 designations taken from the original Piccinotti Catalog (Piccinotti et al. 1982, ApJ, 253, 485: the HEASARC A2PIC database). This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .
