Accurate classification of 28 objects detected in the 39 months Palermo Swift/BAT hard X-ray catalogue

TL;DR

This study accurately classifies 28 hard X-ray sources from the Palermo Swift/BAT catalogue using optical spectroscopy and X-ray data, identifying their types and redshifts to improve source understanding.

Contribution

It provides the first optical classification and detailed analysis of 28 previously unclassified or poorly studied hard X-ray sources from the Palermo catalogue.

Findings

7 sources are Type 1 AGN

20 sources are Type 2 AGN

1 source is a Galactic cataclysmic variable

Abstract

Through an optical campaign performed at 4 telescopes located in the northern and the southern hemispheres, plus archival data from two on-line sky surveys, we have obtained optical spectroscopy for 28 counterparts of unclassified or poorly studied hard X-ray emitting objects detected with Swift/BAT and listed in the 39 months Palermo Swift/BAT hard X-ray catalogue. We have been able to pinpoint the optical counterpart of these high energy sources by means of X-ray observations taken with Swift/XRT or XMM which allowed us to restrict the positional uncertainty from few arcmin to few arcsec; satellite data also provided information on the X-ray spectra of these objects. We find that 7 sources in our sample are Type 1 AGN while 20 are Type 2 AGN, with their redshifts lying between 0.009 and 0.075; the remaining object is a Galactic cataclysmic variable (CV). In this work we provide optical information for all 28 sources and the results of the soft X-ray analysis of 3 out of 5 AGN observed with XMM/Newton.