The Swift BAT Survey Detects Two Optical Broad Line, X-ray Heavily Obscured Active Galaxies: NVSS 193013+341047 and IRAS 05218-1212

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery and analysis of two heavily obscured, X-ray absorbed active galaxies detected by Swift BAT, which may serve as low-redshift analogs to high-redshift extremely red objects and type II quasars.

Contribution

It presents the X-ray properties and spectral energy distributions of two unusual AGN sources, highlighting their potential as local counterparts to distant, obscured quasars.

Findings

Both sources are heavily obscured, Compton-thin AGN at low redshift.

Their spectral energy distributions are very red with high optical and UV extinction.

These sources may be local analogs of high-redshift extremely red objects and type II quasars.

Abstract

The Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) is discovering interesting new objects while monitoring the sky in the 14-195 keV band. Here we present the X-ray properties and spectral energy distributions for two unusual AGN sources. Both NVSS 193013+341047 and IRAS 05218-1212 are absorbed, Compton-thin, but heavily obscured (NH \sim 10^23 cm-2), X-ray sources at redshifts < 0.1. The spectral energy distributions reveal these galaxies to be very red, with high extinction in the optical and UV. A similar SED is seen for the extremely red objects (EROs) detected in the higher redshift universe. This suggests that these unusual BAT-detected sources are a low- redshift (z << 1) analog to EROs, which recent evidence suggests are a class of the elusive type II quasars. Studying the multi-wavelength properties of these sources may reveal the properties of their high redshift counterparts.