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Swift BAT 60-Month Survey of Active Galactic Nuclei Catalog

Metadata Updated: September 19, 2025

Surveys above 10 keV represent one of the best resources to provide an unbiased census of the population of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). The authors present the results of 60 months of observation from 2005 March to 2010 March of the hard X-ray sky with the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT). In this time frame, BAT detected (in the 15 - 55 keV band) 720 sources with a signal-to-noise ratio of >= 5 sigma in an all-sky survey, of which 428 are associated with AGNs, most of which are nearby. This sample has negligible incompleteness and statistics which are a factor of ~ 2 larger over similarly complete sets of AGNs. The sample contains (at least) 15 bona fide Compton-thick AGNs and 3 likely candidates. Compton-thick AGNs represent ~ 5% of AGN samples detected above 15 keV. The authors use the BAT data set to refine the determination of the log N - log S of AGNs which is extremely important, now that NuSTAR prepares for launch, toward assessing the AGN contribution to the cosmic X-ray background. The authors show that the log N - log S of AGNs selected above 10 keV is now established to ~ 10% precision. They derive the luminosity function of Compton-thick AGNs and measure a space density of 7.9 (+4.1, -2.9) x 10<sup>-5</sup> Mpc<sup>-3</sup> for objects with a de-absorbed luminosity larger than 2 x 10<sup>42</sup> erg s<sup>-1</sup>. As the BAT AGNs are all mostly local, they allow us to investigate the spatial distribution of AGNs in the nearby universe regardless of absorption. The authors find concentrations of AGNs that coincide spatially with the largest congregations of matter in the local (<= 85 Mpc) universe. There is some evidence that the fraction of Seyfert 2 objects is larger than average in the direction of these dense regions. This table was created by the HEASARC in May 2012, based on an electronic version of Table 1 from the referenced paper, which was obtained from the ApJ website. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025
Publisher High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center
Maintainer
Identifier ivo://nasa.heasarc/swbatagn60
Data Last Modified 2025-09-10
Category Astrophysics
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 056756a5-6d2a-44c8-b263-ead66b2aae29
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/all/swbatagn60.html
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 9e41017a78fff76de8330a5ed944bd6abd91610bb94571b2d5149fd5890f38d3
Source Schema Version 1.1

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