Swift discovery of Mkn 335 in a high X-ray and UV flux state
ATel #13757; Dirk Grupe (Morehead State University), S. Komossa (MPIfR), and Luigi Gallo (St. Mary's University)
on 23 May 2020; 22:49 UT
Credential Certification: Dirk Grupe (dgrupe007@gmail.com)
Subjects: Optical, Ultra-Violet, X-ray, AGN
Referred to by ATel #: 14717
We report on the discovery by Swift of the
Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 galaxy
Mkn 335 (RA-2000=00h06m19.5s, Dec-2000=+20d12m11s) at its X-ray and UV brightest in more than two years. Over the last two and a half years Mkn 335 has remained in an unusually long-lasting low and relatively quiet state. It has now become brighter after we resumed our regular monitoring campaign after the AGN emerged from Sun-constraint on May 16.
Our new 1 ks Swift observation was performed 2020-May-23 starting at 09:33 UT.
Mrk 335 is now at a 0.3-10 keV flux level of (2.6+/-0.6)e-15 W m^-2 (3.1e-15 W m^-2
after correction for Galactic absorption). The X-ray spectral slope was ax=1.25+/-0.47.
The UVOT observations displayed the highest
optical-UV state seen since the flare in September 2014. Its brightness, in all 6 filters,
is listed below (Vega magnitudes corrected for Galactic reddening, E(B-V)=0.035, are given in parentheses):
V=14.52+/-0.04 (14.40), B=14.73+/-0.04 (14.58), U=13.57+/-0.04 (13.38),
UVW1=13.15+/-0.04 (12.91), UVM2=13.27+/-0.05 (12.93), UVW2=13.09+/-0.04 (12.80).
We would like to thank Brad Cenko for approving our current monitoring campaign and the Swift team for starting the observations right away when Mkn 335 came out of the sun-constraint.
