X-ray Properties of Two Complementary Samples of Intermediate Seyfert Galaxies

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

See attached file

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We appreciate the reviewer for providing valuable comments. To facilitate a second review, we have highlighted all the modifications in bold.

1) We specified all the acronyms the first time they are mentioned. 

2) We slightly modified the explanation of the models. Furthermore, we added the XSPEC manual link for those who want to have a complete understanding of the adopted models.

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper describes a follow-up study to explore a potential bifurcation in Sy 1 obscuration based on spectral properties. 

The paper is well laid out, and the use of X-ray fitting to measure N_H in the objects is a reasonable analysis strategy. The methods are well-described and clear.

The paper does not explicitly mention where the spectral observations come from. There is an implicit understanding that these are SDSS observations as the paper says it is a follow-up on a previous study, but still, the paper should explicitly state the survey used for the present paper's analysis as the paper will be stronger if the dataset description is self-contained and not implied.

I have a detailed comment on the conclusion on page 8, line 271: This further confirms the absence of a direct relation between the intrinsic properties of IS and obscuration.  This seems to imply that the optical diagnostics are not well related to the obscuration, but the study is using total obscuration (including galactic), whereas the optical properties are intrinsic to the source. It is entirely possible that the scattering in the plots away from a correlation is due to a difference in Galactic extinction rather than intrinsic obscuration in the source (which is the item of interest in the optical diagnostic). 

I know the paper states that they use the total N_H rather than the intrinsic N_H because many times, the total obscuration is dominated by the galactic (Hence the described pileup in the X-axis around N_H intrinsic = 0, line 138). But adding it s varying galactic extinction which is unrelated to the source properties will smear/eliminate any possible correlation between the intrinsic optical line diagnostics and the X-ray extracted N_H.

So, it's not clear whether the technique used has the sensitivity to explore this issue (despite the fact that others have done the same thing in past papers). Perhaps the approach should be to select non-zero intrinsic N_H only and use these in the plots rather than have the correlation smeared out by the galactic N_H. Author feedback on this question and clarification should be required.

There are a few places where the English language could be improved. 

Page 4, line 138: do note condensate -> do not condense or 

do not pile up

line 159 green area in the left panel of Figure 2: Figure 2 does not have 

multiple panels. It is a single figure. The language here is confusing.

page 5 line 193:

Figure 3 reveal -> Figure 3 reveals

lower-left part. While, non-jetted sources ->

lower-left part, whereas non-jetted sources

Page 6, lines 200-202:

The sentence beginning with `Radio emission is...." is a very strange sentence, and it is difficult to understand exactly what it is trying to convey. It needs to be rewritten.

Page 19, line 322:  the figure number is missing. 

Author Response

We appreciate the reviewer for providing valuable and stimulating comments. To facilitate a second review, we have highlighted all the modifications in bold.

1) We specified that the spectral observations comes from the SDSS. 

2) We produced the plots of sections 3.2 and 3.3 ([O III]/Hb vs Nh, L([O III]) vs Nh) eliminating the Galactic contribution to the column density (only Nh_int). We agree with the reviewer that the dependence of the intrinsic properties of the AGN should be expressed only in terms of Nh_int, instead of Nh_tot, as proposed by other authors. Despite this different choice, the results are similar to those obtained with Nh_tot (both regarding the distribution of the points and the statistical tests results). This similarity can be attributed to the limited number of points when the Nh_int=0 objects are eliminated from the sample or to the small influence of Galactic obscuration. We have added this information to the cited sections and introduced the new plots in the Appendix.

3) We improved the language in the suggested points.