A deep Chandra observation of the hot gaseous halo around a rare, extremely massive and relativistic jet launching spiral galaxy

TL;DR

This study presents the first X-ray observation of a rare, massive spiral galaxy with the largest known relativistic jets, revealing a hot gaseous halo disrupted by AGN activity and providing insights into black hole mass estimates.

Contribution

It provides the first deep Chandra X-ray observation of this rare galaxy, revealing the structure of its hot halo and the impact of relativistic jets on the gaseous environment.

Findings

Extended hot halo detected up to 80 kpc

Halo is elongated along the galaxy plane, possibly disrupted by jets

Black hole mass estimated at around 5x10^8 solar masses

Abstract

We present a deep Chandra observation of the extremely massive spiral galaxy 2MASX J23453268-0449256, the first X-ray observation of this very rare system which features the largest known relativistic jets from a spiral galaxy. We detect extended X-ray emission from the hot halo surrounding the galaxy, reaching out to 80 kpc in radius. The hot halo is elongated along the plane of the spiral galaxy, and one possibility is that the powerful relativistic jets have disrupted the hot halo gas located perpendicular to the disk. Our calculations indicate that it is energetically feasible that the AGN feedback in this system could have uplifted or completely expelled a significant fraction of the gas in the 20-80 kpc radial range. We also detect extended emission which appears to be associated with the inner and outer southern radio lobes, and is possibly the result of inverse Compton emission. Using the observed X-ray and radio luminosity of the central AGN, the fundamental plane of Gultekin et al. predicts a black hole mass of 5x10^8 M_solar, with a range of 1x10^8 - 3x10^9 M_solar when the scatter in the fundamental plane relation is taken into account. This is consistent with the possibility that an exceptionally massive (>10^9 M_solar) black hole lies at the centre of this galaxy, as suggested by the M_BH-sigma scaling relation, but a tighter constraint cannot be made.