X-Ray Properties of Galactic Nuclei

Preparing this review was my just punishment for stating only two years ago - in another review (Weedman 1977) - that Seyfert galaxies are not strong X-ray sources. I said that because, as recently as three years ago, NGC 4151 was the only Seyfert galaxy known as an X-ray source. Now we have 36 Seyfert 1 galaxies, along with 12 other galaxies with strong emission-line nuclei, that are X-ray sources. And this is all without even having HEAO-2 data at our disposal yet. The study of active galactic nuclei with X-ray astronomy is progressing so rapidly that a reviewer feels almost hopeless. The best I can do is summarize what is known as of the summer of 1979 and give a simple overview of how X-ray and other properties relate. Some excellent reviews of the X-ray properties of Seyfert and other emission-line galaxies already exist. I especially recommend that by Andrew Wilson (1979). He provides very complete references as of a year ago, but X-ray astronomy is progressing so rapidly that he then had only somewhat more than half the active nuclei now in Tables 1 and 2. It was the group working with the Ariel V SSI that made the initial comprehensive X-ray studies of Seyfert galaxies (Ward et al. 1977, Elvis et al. 1978). The UHURU results for Seyfert galaxies followed soon after and are summarized by Tananbaum et al. (1978); the HEAO-A-2 survey results are now in press (Marshall et al. 1979) I have tried to incorporate these and other recent results in Tables 1 and 2.