First Hard X-ray Observation of a Compact Symmetric Object: A Broadband X-ray Study of a radio galaxy OQ+208 with NuSTAR and Chandra

TL;DR

This study presents the first hard X-ray detection of a Compact Symmetric Object (CSO) using NuSTAR, revealing insights into its obscuring material, X-ray emission, and implications for early radio galaxy evolution.

Contribution

First hard X-ray observation of a CSO with NuSTAR, establishing CSOs as a new class of hard X-ray sources and analyzing their nuclear environment.

Findings

Detection of OQ+208 up to 30 keV with NuSTAR.

Presence of cold obscuring matter consistent with a dusty torus.

X-ray emission likely from accretion disk corona or jets, not expanding radio lobes.

Abstract

Compact Symmetric Objects (CSOs) have been observed with Chandra and XMM-Newton to gain insights into the initial stages of a radio source evolution and probe the black hole activity at the time of relativistic outflow formation. However, there have been no CSO observations to date at the hard X-ray energies (> 10 keV), impeding our ability to robustly constrain the properties of the intrinsic X-ray emission and of the medium surrounding the young expanding jets. We present the first hard X-ray observation of a CSO performed with NuSTAR. Our target, OQ+208, is detected up to 30 keV, and thus we establish CSOs as a new class of NuSTAR sources. We analyze the NuSTAR data jointly with our new Chandra and archival XMM-Newton data and find that a young, ~250 years old, radio jet spanning the length of ~10 pc coexists with cold obscuring matter, consistent with a dusty torus, with an equivalent hydrogen column density $N_H = 10^{23}$-$10^{24}$ cm$^{-2}$. The primary X-ray emission is characterized by a photon index $\Gamma \sim 1.45$ and intrinsic 0.5-30 keV luminosity $L \sim 10^{43}$ erg s$^{-1}$. The results of our spectral modeling and broad-line optical classification of the source suggest a porous structure of the obscuring torus. Alternatively, the source may belong to the class of optically un-obscured/X-ray obscured AGN. The observed X-ray emission is too weak compared to that predicted by the expanding radio lobes model, leaving an accretion disk corona or jets as the possible origins of the X-ray emission from this young radio galaxy.