NuSTAR catches the unveiling nucleus of NGC 1068
A. Marinucci, S. Bianchi, G. Matt, D. M. Alexander, M. Balokovic, F., E. Bauer, W. N. Brandt, P. Gandhi, M.Guainazzi, F. A. Harrison, K. Iwasawa,, M. Koss, K. K. Madsen, F. Nicastro, S. Puccetti, C. Ricci, D. Stern, D. J., Walton

TL;DR
This study used NuSTAR and XMM-Newton observations to detect a temporary decrease in obscuring material in NGC 1068, revealing the AGN's direct nuclear radiation and estimating its intrinsic luminosity.
Contribution
First detection of a transient decrease in obscuring column density unveiling the AGN's direct emission in NGC 1068.
Findings
Transient decrease in column density from ~10^25 to 6.7×10^24 cm^-2
Unveiled the direct nuclear radiation of NGC 1068's AGN
Estimated intrinsic 2-10 keV luminosity of the AGN
Abstract
We present a NuSTAR and XMM-Newton monitoring campaign in 2014/2015 of the Compton-thick Seyfert 2 galaxy, NGC 1068. During the August 2014 observation, we detect with NuSTAR a flux excess above 20 keV () with respect to the December 2012 observation and to a later observation performed in February 2015. We do not detect any spectral variation below 10 keV in the XMM-Newton data. The transient excess can be explained by a temporary decrease of the column density of the obscuring material along the line of sight (from N cm to N cm), which allows us for the first time to unveil the direct nuclear radiation of the buried AGN in NGC 1068 and to infer an intrinsic 2-10 keV luminosity L erg s.
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