Review for "Supermassive Black Holes in the Distant Universe", Ed. A. J. Barger, Kluwer Academic Publishers.
astro-ph/0403618

For a PDF version of the article, click here.

A PANCHROMATIC VIEW OF AGN

Guido Risaliti & Martin Elvis

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
grisaliti, melvis@cfa.harvard.edu

Abstract. We review the continuum emission of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) over the entire electromagnetic spectrum. After a brief historical introduction, we describe the main spectral properties of unobscured AGN, discussing the selection biases which prevent us from having a complete view of the AGN population in the universe, and trying to build an updated spectral energy distribution of optically selected quasars. In the second part of the review, we describe the spectral properties of obscured AGN. Finally, we discuss the main observational methods in the different wavelength bands for disentangling AGN and stellar emission, and the ability of these methods to find new (mainly obscured) AGN, a significant fraction of which are probably still missing in current surveys.

Table of Contents