The early stage of a cosmic collision? XMM-Newton unveils two obscured AGN in the galaxy pair ESO509-IG066

We report the XMM-Newton discovery of a X-ray bright AGN pair in the interacting galaxy system ESO509-IG066. Both galaxies host an X-ray luminous ( L-X similar to 10(43) erg s(-1)) obscured nucleus with column densities N-H similar or equal to 7 x 10(22) cm(-2) and N-H similar or equal to 5 x 10(21) cm(-2). The optical morphology is only mildly disturbed, suggesting a merging system in the early stage of its evolution. Still, the pair is probably gravitationally bound, and might eventually evolve into a compact, fully gas embedded systems such as NGC 6240 ( Komossa et al. 2003).