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Franz Bauer Presents a Talk Entitled “Reconciling IR Constraints on AGN Tori using X-rays”

  • The talk will be on Friday, September 5th, at 11:30 hrs, in room 302 of building R5, República 399 at UNAB.

A new talk is added to the list of events organized by Astronomy Nucleus at UDP and the Astronomy group at UNAB.

“Reconciling IR Constraints on AGN Tori using X-rays” is the title of the talk that will be presented by Dr. Franz Bauer, who is an assistant professor at the Instituto de Astrofísica of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and got his Astronomy Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.

Dr. Bauer comments that “Interferometric mid-IR observations of nearby AGN have provided us with a mixed picture of how the material around AGN is distributed. In some cases, a classical “torus” is seen, while in others diffuse clouds, and still others display multiple structures. Such findings can at times appear at odds with observations at other wavelengths, where obscuration is clearly present. X-ray observations provide an alternate method for probing the structure of the AGN, as transmitted X-rays can penetrate column densities up to many times 1e24 cm-2 directly, while above this value, Compton-reflected X-rays from different lines of sight can still be seen. I will present new results from NuSTAR and Chandra that help us understand where these Compton-reflected X-rays come from and how this relates to what we know from the mid-IR”.

The talk, which will be presented on Friday, September 5th at 11:30 hrs, in room 302 of building R5, República 399 at UNAB, is aimed at astronomers and will be in English.