NuSTAR Observations of Starburst Galaxies
Abstract
NuSTAR, the first satellite with hard X-ray focusing optics, opens up the possibility to not only detect starburstn galaxies above 10 keV for the first time but also characterize their hard X-ray properties. Here we present an overview of a NuSTAR program to survey seven normal/starburst galaxies: NGC 253, M82, M83, NGC 3256, NGC 3310, Arp 299, and M31. We also discuss data analysis strategies. All galaxies have been observed coordinated with either Chandra or XMM-Newton or both. The main results of these observations were: we characterized the typical starburst spectrum above 10 keV and showed that the spectrum is soft (photon index ~ 3) above 7 keV and determined that individually detected sources are generally black holes in a "transition" accretion state or neutron star systems accreting near the Eddington rate, and variability on time scales of weeks to months is typically detected. In the case of NGC 253 we decomposed the unresolved hard X-ray emission between background, unresolved binaries and truly diffuse flux and found that the diffuse flux upper limit is marginally above model predictions for inverse-Compton scattering of IR photons by cosmic rays.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #227
- Pub Date:
- January 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AAS...22730804P