Review of GRANAT Observations of AGNs

Abstract

Brief review of AGNs observations in the X-ray / soft gamma-ray bands with the orbital observatory GRANAT is presented.For three well known bright objects (3C273, NGC4151 and Cen A) broad band (3 keV–few hundreds keV) spectra have been obtained. Imaging capabilities allowed accurate (several arcminutes) identification of these objects with sources of hard X-rays.The spectrum of NGC4151 above ≈ 50 keV was found to be much steeper than that in most of the previous observations, while in standard X-ray band the spectrum agrees with observed previously. The comparison of the observed spectra with that of the X-Ray Background (XRB) indicates that sources similar to NGC4151 could reproduce the shape of XRB spectrum in 3–60 keV band.Cen A was observed in the very low state during most of observations in 1990–1993, except for two observations in 1991. The variability of the hard X-ray flux has been detected on the time scales of several days.