The first hard X-ray spectral catalogue of Blazars observed by NuSTAR

TL;DR

This paper presents the first hard X-ray spectral catalogue of blazars observed by NuSTAR, providing homogeneous spectral analysis and SED characterization for 126 blazars based on 253 observations.

Contribution

It introduces a dedicated pipeline for automated spectral analysis and releases the first comprehensive hard X-ray blazar catalogue from NuSTAR data.

Findings

Catalogue includes 253 observations of 126 blazars.

Homogeneous spectral properties derived for all sources.

Multiple observations available for 30 blazars.

Abstract

Blazars are a peculiar class of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) that enlighten the sky at all wavelengths. The electromagnetic emission of these sources is jet-dominated resulting in a spectral energy distribution (SED) that has a typical double-humped shape. X-ray photons provide a wealth of information on the physics of each source as in the X-ray band we can observe the tail of SED first peak, the rise of the second one or the transition between the two. NuSTAR, thanks to its capability of focusing X-rays up to 79 keV provides broadband data particularly suitable to compute SEDs in a still poorly explored part of the spectrum. In the context of the Open Universe initiative we developed a dedicated pipeline, NuSTAR_Spectra, a shell-script that automatically downloads data from the archive, generates scientific products and carries out a complete spectral analysis. The script homogeneously extracts high level scientific products for both NuSTAR's telescopes and the spectral characterisation is performed testing two phenomenological models. The corresponding X-ray properties are derived from the data best-fit and the SEDs are also computed. The systematic processing of all blazar observations of the NuSTAR public archive allowed us to release the first hard X-ray spectroscopic catalogue of blazars (NuBlazar). The catalogue, updated to September 30th, 2021, includes 253 observations of 126 distinct blazars, 30 of which have been multiply observed.