090331

The rare active galactic nuclei (AGN) that are oriented toward us so that their accretion flow exhibits disk-like megamaser emission present a remarkable opportunity to study the geometry of the AGN obscurer on typically unresolvable parsec scales. Not only is their orientation highly constrained but their black hole masses are well measured which is otherwise difficult to achieve in obscured AGN. Their high obscuring columns allow us to directly detect and more robustly model the reprocessed X-ray spectra onto which features due to the geometry of the obscuring gas are imprinted. With a total of 256 ks of XMM-Newton and 310 ks of NuSTAR time we propose to significantly expand the sample of nearby AGN for which obscurer geometry can be uniquely constrained using broadband X-ray data. [truncated! Please see actual data for full text]