arXiv subjects

C. S. Crawford

Publications and source records attributed to C. S. Crawford.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2001

Multi-wavelength observations of serendipitous Chandra sources

We describe progress in a programme to study a sample of sources typical of those which contribute a large fraction of the hard X-ray background. The sources are selected from the fields of approximately 10 ks Chandra cluster observations with follow-up in the near-infrared and optical. The X-ray data indicate that many of these are powerful, obscured sources. Two hard objects which are lensed by the cluster are good candidates for X-ray type-2 quasars, with luminosities of the order 10^{44}-10^{45} erg s^{-1} and obscuring column densities of the order 10^{23} cm^{-2}. We find that the sources are bright in the infra-red (K typically 17-18). From Keck optical spectra and photometric redshifts, we find that the host galaxies are consistent with being early-type, massive hosts at redshifts ranging from 0.2 to 3, with median redshift approximately 1.5. The two obscured quasars also have mid-infrared detections and 850-micron upper-limits implying that the surrounding dust is at warm-to-hot temperatures (T of the order of 1000 K).

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arXiv2001

Multi-wavelength observations of serendipitous Chandra X-ray sources in the field of A2390

We present optical spectra and near-infrared imaging of a sample of serendipitous X-ray sources detected in the field of Chandra observations of the A2390 cluster of galaxies. The sources have 0.5-7 keV fluxes of 0.6-8 x 10^{-14} erg cm^{-2} s^{-1} and lie around the break in the 2-10 keV source counts. They therefore are typical of sources dominating the X-ray Background in that band. Twelve of the fifteen targets for which we have optical spectra show emission lines, most of which have soft X-ray spectra. Including photometric redshifts and published spectra we have redshifts for seventeen of the sources, ranging from z~0.2 up to z~3 with a peak between z=1-2. Ten of our sources have hard X-ray spectra indicating a spectral slope flatter than that of a typical unabsorbed quasar. Two hard sources that are gravitationally lensed by the foreground cluster are obscured quasars, with intrinsic 2-10 keV luminosities of 0.2-3 x 10^{45} erg/s and absorbing columns of N_H>10^{23} cm^{-2}. Both were detected by ISO, showing that the absorbed flux emerges in the far-infrared.

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arXiv2001

Detecting high redshift evolved galaxies as the hosts of optically faint hard X-ray sources

We combine deep Subaru near-infrared images of the massive lensing clusters A2390 and A370 with Keck optical data to map the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of Chandra X-ray sources lying behind the clusters. The three sources behind A2390 are found to have extremely red colors with SEDs consistent with evolved galaxies at redshifts z>1.4. One source has extremely anomalous colors, which we interpret as evidence for a type Sa SED at a redshift around 2.5. The photometric redshift of another source has been confirmed at z=1.467 from near-infrared spectroscopy using the CISCO spectrograph on Subaru. Mapping of optically faint hard X-ray sources may prove to be an extremely efficient way to locate luminous evolved galaxies at high redshifts.

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arXiv2001

Chandra detection of the intracluster medium around 3C294 at z=1.786

We present a Chandra observation of the powerful radio galaxy 3C294 showing clear evidence for a surrounding intracluster medium. At a redshift of 1.786 this is the most distant cluster of galaxies yet detected in X-rays. The radio core is detected as a point source, which has a spectrum consistent with a heavily-absorbed power law implying an intrinsic 2-10 keV luminosity of ~10^45 erg/s. A small excess of emission is associated with the southern radio hotspots. The soft, diffuse emission from the intracluster medium is centred on the radio source. It has an hour-glass shape in the N-S direction, extending to radii of at least 100 kpc, well beyond the radio source. The X-ray spectrum of this extended component is fit by a thermal model with temperature ~5 keV, or by gas cooling from above 7 keV at rates of ~400-700 Msolar/yr. The rest-frame 0.3-10 keV luminosity of the cluster is ~4.5x10^44 erg/s. The existence of such a cluster is consistent with a low density universe.

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arXiv2000

Chandra imaging of the X-ray core of Abell 1795

We report the discovery of a 40 arcsec long X-ray filament in the core of the cluster of galaxies A1795. The feature coincides with an Halpha+NII filament found by Cowie et al in the early 1980s and resolved into at least 2 U-band filaments by McNamara et al in the mid 1990s. The (emission-weighted) temperature of the X-ray emitting gas along the filament is 2.5-3 keV, as revealed by X-ray colour ratios. The deprojected temperature will be less. A detailed temperature map of the core of the cluster presented. The cD galaxy at the head of the filament is probably moving through or oscillating in the cluster core. The radiative cooling time of the X-ray emitting gas in the filament is about 3x10^8 yr which is similar to the age of the filament obtained from its length and velocity. This suggests that the filament is produced by cooling of the gas from the intracluster medium. The filament, much of which is well separated from the body of the cD galaxy and its radio source, is potentially of great importance in helping to understand the energy and ionization source of the optical nebulosity common in cooling flows.

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arXiv2000

Extended line emission around seven radio-loud quasars at redshift z~2

We present near-infrared spectra of seven radio-loud quasars with a median redshift of 2.1, five of which were previously known to have Ly alpha nebulae. Extended [OIII]5007 and H alpha emission are evident around six objects, at the level of a few times 1E-16 erg/cm^2/arcsec^2/s within 2 arcsec of the nucleus (16 kpc in the adopted cosmology). Nuclear [OII]3727 is detected in three of the 5 quasars studied at this wavelength, and clearly extended in one of them. The extended [OIII] tends to be brighter on the side of the nucleus with the stronger, jet-like radio emission, indicating at least that the extranuclear gas is distributed anisotropically. It is also redshifted by several hundred km/s from the nuclear [OIII], perhaps because the latter is blueshifted from the systemic velocity of the host galaxy. Alternatively, the velocity shifts could be due to infall (which is suggested by line widths ~1000 km/s FWHM) in combination with a suitable dust geometry. Lyalpha/Halpha ratios well below the case B value suggest that some dust is present. Photoionization modelling of the [OIII]/[OII] ratios in the extended gas suggests that its pressure is around or less than a few times 1E7 cm^-3 K; any confining intracluster medium may thus host a strong cooling flow. A comparison with lower-redshift work suggests that there has been little evolution in the nuclear emission line properties of radio-loud quasars between redshifts 1 and 2.

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arXiv2000

Chandra imaging of the complex X-ray core of the Perseus cluster

We report subarcsec-resolution X-ray imaging of the core of the Perseus cluster around the galaxy NGC 1275 with the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The ROSAT-discovered holes associated with the radio lobes have X-ray bright rims which are cooler than the surrounding gas and not due to shocks. The holes themselves may contain some hotter gas. We map strong photoelectric absorption across the Northern lobe and rim due to a small infalling irregular galaxy, known as the high velocity system. Two outer holes, one of which was previously known, are identified with recently found spurs of low-frequency radio emission. The spiral appearance of the X-ray cooler gas and the outer optical parts of NGC 1275 may be due to angular momentum in the cooling flow.

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arXiv2000

Molecular hydrogen emission in Cygnus A

We present J, H and K-band spectroscopy of Cygnus A, spanning 1.0-2.4 micron in the rest-frame and hence several rovibrational H2, H recombination and [FeII] emission lines. The lines are spatially extended by up to 6kpc from the nucleus, but their distinct kinematics indicate that the three groups (H, H2 and [FeII]) are not wholly produced in the same gas. The broadest line, [FeII]1.644, exhibits a non-gaussian profile with a broad base (FWHM=1040 km/s), perhaps due to interaction with the radio source. Extinctions to the line-emitting regions substantially exceed earlier measurements based on optical H recombination lines. Hard X-rays from the quasar nucleus are likely to dominate the excitation of the H2 emission. The results of Maloney, Hollenbach and Tielens (1996) are thus used to infer the total mass of gas in H2 v=1-0 S(1)-emitting clouds as a function of radius, for gas densities of 10^3 and 10^5 cm^-3, and stopping column densities N_H=10^22-10^24 cm^-2. Assuming azimuthal symmetry, at least 2.3E8 Msun of such material is present within 5kpc of the nucleus, if the line-emitting clouds see an unobscured quasar spectrum. Alternatively, if the bulk of the X-ray absorption to the nucleus inferred by Ueno et al. (1994) arises in a circumnuclear torus, the implied gas mass rises to 10^10 Msun. The latter plausibly accounts for 10^9 yr of mass deposition from the cluster cooling flow, for which Mdot \simeq 10 Msun/yr within this radius.

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arXiv2000

Infrared observations of serendipitous hard Chandra X-ray sources

We present observations of a sample of optically-faint, hard X-ray sources of the kind likely to be responsible for much of the hard X-ray background. We confirm that such sources are easily detected in the near-infrared, and find that they have a featureless continuum suggesting that the active nucleus is heavily obscured. The infrared colours of the majority of the targets observed are consistent with absorbed elliptical host galaxies at z=1-2. It is likely that we are observing some of the brighter members of the important new class of X-ray Type II quasars.

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arXiv2000

Testing the connection between the X-ray and submillimetre source populations using Chandra

The powerful combination of the Chandra X-ray telescope, the SCUBA submillimetre-wave camera and the gravitational lensing effect of the massive galaxy clusters A2390 and A1835 has been used to place stringent X-ray flux limits on six faint submillimetre SCUBA sources and deep submillimetre limits on three Chandra sources which lie in fields common to both instruments. One further source is marginally detected in both the X-ray and submillimetre bands. For all the SCUBA sources our results are consistent with starburst-dominated emission. For two objects, including SMMJ14011+0252 at z=2.55, the constraints are strong enough that they can only host powerful active galactic nuclei if they are both Compton-thick and any scattered X-ray flux is weak or itself absorbed. The lensing amplification for the sources is in the range 1.5-7, assuming that they lie at z>1. The brightest detected X-ray source has a faint extended optical counterpart (I~22) with colours consistent with a galaxy at z~1. The X-ray spectrum of this galaxy is hard, implying strong intrinsic absorption with a column density of about 1e23 cm-2 and an intrinsic (unabsorbed) 2-10 keV luminosity of 3e44 erg/s. This source is therefore a Type-II quasar. The weakest detected X-ray sources are not detected in HST images down to I~26.

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arXiv2000

The ROSAT Brightest Cluster Sample (BCS) - IV. The extended sample

We present a low-flux extension of the X-ray selected ROSAT Brightest Cluster Sample (BCS) published in Paper I of this series. Like the original BCS and employing an identical selection procedure, the BCS extension is compiled from ROSAT All-Sky Survey (RASS) data in the northern hemisphere (dec > 0 deg) and at high Galactic latitudes (|b| > 20 deg). It comprises 100 X-ray selected clusters of galaxies with measured redshifts z < 0.3 (as well as seven more at z > 0.3) and total fluxes between 2.8 x 10-12 erg cm-2 s-1 and 4.4 x 10-12 erg cm-2 s-1 in the 0.1-2.4 keV band (the latter value being the flux limit of the original BCS). The extension can be combined with the main sample published in 1998 to form the homogeneously selected extended BCS (eBCS), the largest and statistically best understood cluster sample to emerge from the ROSAT All-Sky Survey to date. The nominal completeness of the combined sample (defined with respect to a power law fit to the bright end of the BCS log N-log S distribution) is relatively low at 75 per cent (compared to 90 per cent for the high-flux sample of Paper I). However, just as for the original BCS, this incompleteness can be accurately quantified, and thus statistically corrected for, as a function of X-ray luminosity and redshift. In addition to its importance for improved statistical studies of the properties of clusters in the local Universe, the low-flux extension of the BCS is also intended to serve as a finding list for X-ray bright clusters in the northern hemisphere which we hope will prove useful in the preparation of cluster observations with the next generation of X-ray telescopes such as Chandra or XMM-Newton.

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arXiv1999

Optical integral field spectroscopy of the extended line emission around six radio-loud quasars

We present integral field spectroscopy of a small sample of radio-loud quasars at intermediate redshift (0.26<z<0.60), most of which are associated with large radio sources. All have oxygen line emission extended over tens of kiloparcsecs, and these nebulae display a diverse range in both morphology and kinematic behaviour. Two quasars show 'plumes' of extended line emission, two show a clumpy structure and a further one shows a smooth distribution. There is no clear pattern with regard to the distribution of the ionized gas in relation to the radio source axis; the extended emission-line regions are found both parallel and perpendicular - and also totally unrelated to - the radio axis. The velocity structure of the ionized gas ranges from essentially static to apparent smooth rotation, and in two cases, show a clear association with the radio source. Given the disparity in properties, the nebulae all show a surprisingly similar ionization state, as measured by the extended lines of [OII] and [OIII]. Assuming the gas is ionized by at least the nearby quasar nucleus, we use the emission line ratios to infer a pressure in the ionized gas; in all cases we find it to be at high pressure, suggesting confinement by an external (probably intracluster) medium.

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arXiv1999

Mapping the gas kinematics and ionization structure of four ultraluminous IRAS galaxies

(Abridged) We analyse the morphology, kinematics and ionization structure of the extended emission-line regions in four ULIRGs at 0.118 1000 km/s within 1" of the nucleus; an isolated blob ~8kpc from the nucleus with a much lower FWHM may lie in a photoionization cone. Line ratios suggest AGN-photoionization for the systemic gas, and shock+precursor ionization for a second, spatially-unresolved, nuclear component blueshifted by 990 km/s. The gas in IRAS F23060+0505 is in dipolar rotation but with an asymmetric rotation curve and an increased FWHM on one side; an asymmetry to the narrow-line profiles is attributed to a spatially-resolved outflow, and shock+precursor ionization is dominant. At lower luminosity, IRAS F01217+0122 has a featureless velocity field with a high FWHM, an AGN-like emission-line spectrum and a ~1 Gyr old stellar population. IRAS F01003-2238 has a dipolar velocity field and an HII-region emission-line spectrum with a strong blue continuum which can be reproduced with ~10^7 O5 stars, sufficient to account for the bolometric luminosity of the entire galaxy. This diversity is accommodated within the merger-driven evolutionary scenario for ULIRGs: the merger status is assessed from the kinematics in a way which is consistent with the colour and morphology of the galaxy, or with the inferred age of the stellar population and the dominance of the AGN.

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arXiv1999

Detection of X-ray emission from the host clusters of 3CR quasars

We report the detection of extended X-ray emission around several powerful 3CR quasars with redshifts out to 0.73. The ROSAT HRI images of the quasars have been corrected for spacecraft wobble and compared with an empirical point-spread function. All the quasars examined show excess emission at radii of 15 arcsec and more; the evidence being strong for the more distant objects and weak only for the two nearest ones, which are known from other wavelengths not to lie in strongly clustered environments. The spatial profiles of the extended component is consistent with thermal emission from the intracluster medium of moderately rich host clusters to the quasars. The total luminosities of the clusters are in the range 4x10^44 - 3x10^45 erg/s, assuming a temperature of 4keV. The inner regions of the intracluster medium are, in all cases, dense enough to be part of a cooling flow.

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arXiv1999

The optical variability of the narrow line Seyfert 1 galaxy IRAS 13224-3809

We report on a short optical monitoring programme of the narrow-line Seyfert 1 Galaxy IRAS 13224-3809. Previous X-ray observations of this object have shown persistent giant variability. The degree of variability at other wavelengths may then be used to constrain the conditions and emission processes within the nucleus. Optical variability is expected if the electron population responsible for the soft X-ray emission is changing rapidly and Compton-upscattering infrared photons in the nucleus, or if the mechanism responsible for X-ray emission causes all the emission processes to vary together. We find that there is no significant optical variability with a firm upper limit of 2 per cent and conclude that the primary soft X-ray emission region produces little of the observed optical emission. The X-ray and optical emission regions must be physically distinct and any reprocessing of X-rays into the optical waveband occurs some distance from the nucleus. The lack of optical variability indicates that the energy density of infrared radiation in the nucleus is at most equal to that of the ultraviolet radiation since little is upscattered into the optical waveband. The extremely large X-ray variability of IRAS 13224-3809 may be explained by relativistic boosting of more modest variations. Although such boosting enhances X-ray variability over optical variability, this only partially explains the lack of optical variability.

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arXiv1999

The ROSAT Brightest Cluster Sample (BCS): -- III. Optical spectra of the central cluster galaxies

We present new spectra of dominant galaxies in X-ray selected clusters, which combine with our previously published spectra to form a sample of 256 dominant galaxies in 215 clusters; 177 of these are members of the ROSAT Brightest Cluster Sample. 27% of the central dominant galaxies have emission-line spectra, all but 5 with line intensity ratios typical of cooling flow nebulae. A further 6% show only [NII] with H-alpha in absorption. We find no evidence for an increase in the frequency of line emission with X-ray luminosity. Purely X-ray selected clusters at low redshift have a higher probability of containing line emission. The more H-alpha luminous galaxies have larger emission-line regions and show a higher ratio of Balmer to forbidden line emission, although there is a continuous trend of ionization behaviour across four decades in H-alpha luminosity. Galaxies with the more luminous line emission show a significantly bluer continuum, whereas lower-luminosity and [NII]-only line emitters have continua that differ little from those of non-line emitting dominant galaxies. Values of the Balmer decrement in the more luminous systems commonly imply intrinsic reddening of E(B-V)~0.3, and when this is corrected for, the excess blue light can be characterized by a population of massive young stars, which can also provide sufficient photoionization to produce the observed H-alpha luminosity. The lower H-alpha luminosity systems show a higher ionization state and few massive stars, requiring instead the introduction of a harder source of photoionization.

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arXiv1998

The ROSAT Brightest Cluster Sample (BCS) - I. The compilation of the sample and the cluster log N-log S distribution

We present a 90 per cent flux-complete sample of the 201 X-ray brightest clusters of galaxies in the northern hemisphere (dec > 0 deg), at high Galactic latitudes (|b| > 20 deg), with measured redshifts z < 0.3 and fluxes higher than 4.4 x 10^(-12) erg cm^(-2) s^{-1) in the 0.1-2.4 keV band. The sample, called the ROSAT Brightest Cluster Sample (BCS), is selected from ROSAT All-Sky Survey data and is the largest X-ray selected cluster sample compiled to date. In addition to Abell clusters, which form the bulk of the sample, the BCS also contains the X-ray brightest Zwicky clusters and other clusters selected from their X-ray properties alone. Effort has been made to ensure the highest possible completeness of the sample and the smallest possible contamination by non-cluster X-ray sources. X-ray fluxes are computed using an algorithm tailored for the detection and characterization of X-ray emission from galaxy clusters. These fluxes are accurate to better than 15 per cent (mean 1 sigma error). We find the cumulative log N-log S distribution of clusters to follow a power law k S^(-alpha) with alpha=1.31 (+0.06)(-0.03) (errors are the 10th and 90th percentiles) down to fluxes of 2 x 10^(-12) erg cm^(-2) s^(-1), i.e. considerably below the BCS flux limit. Although our best-fitting slope disagrees formally with the canonical value of -1.5 for a Euclidean distribution, the BCS log N-log S distribution is consistent with a non-evolving cluster population if cosmological effects are taken into account.

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arXiv1998

Limits on the X-ray emission from several hyperluminous IRAS galaxies

We report long, pointed ROSAT HRI observations of the hyperluminous galaxies IRAS F00235+1024, F12514+1027, F14481+4454 and F14537+1950. Two of them are optically classified as Seyfert-like. No X-ray sources are detected at the positions of any of the objects, with a mean upper limit L(X)/L(Bol) of 2.3 times 10^-4. This indicates that any active nuclei are either atypically weak at X-ray wavelengths or obscured by column densities N(H)>10^23 cm^-2. They differ markedly from `ordinary' Seyfert 2 galaxies, bearing a closer resemblance in the soft X-ray band to composite Seyfert 2 galaxies or to some types of starburst.

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