The X-ray reflector in NGC 4945: a time and space resolved portrait

Understand

We present a time, spectral and imaging analysis of the X-ray reflector in NGC 4945, which reveals its geometrical and physical structure with unprecedented detail.

• NGC 4945 hosts one of the brightest AGN in the sky above 10 keV, but it is only visible through its reflected/scattered emission below 10 keV, due to absorption by a column density of ~4\times10^24 cm-2.
• A new Suzaku campaign of 5 observations spanning ~6 months, together with past XMM-Newton and Chandra observations, show a remarkable constancy (within <10%) of the reflected component.
• Instead, Swift-BAT reveals strong intrinsic variability on time scales longer than one year.