User:C messier/NGC 3147

NGC 3147 is a spiral galaxy located in the constellation Draco. It is located at a distance of circa 130 million light years from Earth, which, given its apparent dimensions, means that NGC 3147 is about 140,000 light years across. It was discovered by William Herschel οn April 3, 1785. It is a Type II Seyfert galaxy.

Structure
The galaxy has a small and bright nucleus and tightly wound multiple spiral arms. The overall appearance of the galaxy resambles that of NGC 488, however the nuclear bulge is smaller. The arms consist of spiral segments that branch after approximately one quarter of a revolution. HII regions can be detacted in the arms.

Active galactic nucleus
NGC 3147 has been characterised as a Seyfert II galaxy. It is considered the best candidate to be a true type II Seyfert galaxy, galaxies which feature optical/UV spectrum lacking broad emission lines due to the lack of the broad line region rather than its obscuration, since the nucleus is simultaneously seen unobscured in the X-rays.

The galaxy was observed stimultaneously in the optical and X-ray spectrum by Bianchi et al. and concluded that the X-ray spectrum is unabsorbed while its optical spectrum lacks broad lines, a missmatch with respect to the Unification Model. Birghtman et al. confirmed their findings and also noted that the hard X-ray flux dropped by a factor of ∼2 between the observation by Chandra (2001) and XMM-Newton (2006). Further flux variation was observed by Suzaku in 2010, confirming the variability of the source. The nuclear emission in the UV band shows negligible variability. Shi et al. used data from Spitzer Space Telescope and ground-based optical spectropolarimeteric observations and observed lack of polarised broad emission lines in NGC 3147. NGC 3147 was observed by NuSTAR at the 3-40 keV X-ray spectrum, which is characterised by a simple power-law, with a standard Γ ∼ 1.7 and an iron emission line, with no need for any further component up to ∼ 40 keV.

There is a debate whether the lack of broad lines detection observed with NGC 3147 is caused by the presence of an Compton-thick column with the presence of a highly ionised reflactor to account for the X-ray spectrum or not. Bianchi et al. rejected the presence of a Compton thick column on the grounds of low-equivalent width of the iron Kα line (≃130 eV), and of the large ratio between hard X-ray and [O III] fluxes. Birghtman et al. confirmed their findings using data from XMM-Newton and Chandra. They also found that the X-ray flux is variable, meaning that the nucleus may be observed directly. However, they noted the presence of Compton-thick column cannot be ruled out. The observations by Suzaku in the hard X-rays spectrum didn't cast more light, but along with the observations performed by XMM-Newton put tight constraints on the column density.

After the observations by NuStar in 2015, Bianchi et al concluded that the spectral properties and the significant variability on time-scales as short as weeks strongly support an unobscured line-of-sight for the nucleus of NGC 3147 and the Compton-thick scenario is strongly disfavoured.

Supernovae
Four supernovae have been discovered in NGC 3147: SN 1972H (mag. 15.1 ), SN 1997bq (mag. 14.5, type Ia ), SN 2006gi (mag. 15.6, type Ib ), and SN 2008fv (mag. 14.8, type Ia ).

Nearby galaxies
NGC 3147 is the brightest galaxy in the NGC 3147 group, which also includes NGC 3155, UGC 5570, UGC 5686, and UGC 5689. A bit further away lie NGC 3183, NGC 3348, NGC 3364, and NGC 3516.