094201

Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are assumed to be obscured by a dusty gas torusoriginally described as homogeneous.Recent studies show variability in the hydrogen column density of this obscuring material leading us to believe that this structure is patchy rather than uniform. We propose tomonitor with four short 20ks XMM-Newton observations NGC 1142 a nearby X-raybright Seyfert 2 galaxy which shows six months to yearly variability but lacksobservations probing timescales of weeks to months. Detecting variability wouldallow us to derive a complete picture of the properties of its absorber. Notdetecting the short term variability would force us to consider more complexscenarios. [truncated! Please see actual data for full text]