ROSAT evidence for AGN and superwind activity in NGC 6240 and NGC 2782
Hartmut Schulz, Stefanie Komossa, Thomas W. Berghoefer, Berto Boer
Abstract
We present ROSAT observations of the starburst galaxy NGC 2782 (HRI plus a weak PSPC frame) and the ultraluminous infrared galaxy NGC 6240 (PSPC). The (0.1-2.4) keV spectra of both objects appear similar. However, due to better sampling spectral modeling is only warranted in case of NGC 6240 for which both a single thermal Raymond-Smith model (kT = 0.44) or a hybrid model consisting of 80% power-law with the canonical photon index -1.9 plus 20% Raymond-Smith contribution (kT = 0.63) lead to good fits. However, the single thermal model turns out to be unlikely because it yields a luminosity of 3.8 10^{43} erg/s, which is hard to reach in a starburst superwind-scenario. The hybrid model leads to a more moderate luminosity of 5.2 10^{42} erg/s, of which 1.0 10^{42} erg/s can be attributed to shocked superwind gas. We link the remaining 4.2 10^{42} erg/s powerlaw to an AGN component because the alternative of inverse-compton scattering of the FIR radiation leads to a too low flux when estimated with available data. The result appears to be consistent with preliminarily announced ASCA observations. For NGC 2782 we find L_x = 4 10^{41} erg/s which can be explained by emission from a shocked superwind region with a high preshock density in agreement with earlier optical evidence for an outflowing supershell.