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ASCA ObservationsThis recently expired grant has supported the work of the PI, his students, and his collaborators on a variety of ASCA projects over the past four years. Annual reports have summarized much of the work accomplished; here we provide a brief review of the work resulting from this effort, and a summary of the personnel who have benefited from the grant's support. Starburst Galaxies with Extreme X-ray Luminosities This project began as a careful examination of the claims of Boller et al. (1992) that there were dozens of "normal" galaxies in the ROSAT All-Sky Survey that had X-ray luminosities in excess of 1042 erg sec, higher than that seen in the hundreds of non-AGN galaxies observed with Einstein. If true, this suggested that X-ray emission associated with star formation activity might have a significant contribution to make to the still unexplained cosmic X-ray background (XRB). Since some of our earlier work with the Einstein Observatory Deep Surveys had suggested a similar possibility and several sets of authors over the years had modelled the starburst XRB contribution, these claims were worth pursuing. Our work expanded the examination beyond the RASS to include earlier claims of high-luminosity galaxies powered by starburst emission (selected in this case on the basis of the far-IR luminosities). The result of extensive followup observations under several programs using ROSAT, ASCA, and ground-based facilities was to show that nearly all of these objects in fact have hidden AGN at their cores, and that their luminosities are not in any way extraordinary.
Document ID
19990009047
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Contractor or Grantee Report
Authors
Helfand, David J. (Columbia Univ. New York, NY United States)
Date Acquired
September 6, 2013
Publication Date
October 1, 1998
Subject Category
Astronomy
Report/Patent Number
CAL-3056
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: NAG5-2556
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.

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