Direct probe of the inner accretion flow around the supermassive black
  hole in NGC 2617
  NGC 2617 is a nearby ($z\sim 0.01$) active galaxy that recently switched from
being a Seyfert 1.8 to be a Seyfert 1.0. At the same time, it underwent a
strong increase of X-ray flux by one order of magnitude with respect to
archival measurements. We characterise the X-ray spectral and timing properties
of NGC 2617 with the aim of studying the physics of a changing-look active
galactic nucleus (AGN). We performed a comprehensive timing and spectral
analysis of two XMM-Newton pointed observations spaced by one month,
complemented by archival quasi-simultaneous INTEGRAL observations. We found
that, to the first order, NGC 2617 looks like a type 1 AGN in the X-ray band
and, with the addition of a modest reflection component, its continuum can be
modelled well either with a power law plus a phenomenological blackbody, a
partially covered power law, or a double Comptonisation model. Independent of
the continuum adopted, in all three cases a column density of a few $10^{23}$
cm$^{-2}$ of neutral gas covering 20-40\% of the continuum source is required
by the data. Most interestingly, absorption structures due to highly ionised
iron have been detected in both observations with a redshift of about $0.1c$
with respect to the systemic redshift of the host galaxy. The redshifted
absorber can be ascribed to a failed wind/aborted jets component, to
gravitational redshift effects, and/or to matter directly falling towards the
central supermassive black hole. In either case, we are probing the innermost
accretion flow around the central supermassive black hole of NGC 2617 and might
be even watching matter in a direct inflow towards the black hole itself.
