Discovery of H2O megamasers in obscured active galactic nuclei

A new method to discover obscured active galactic nuclei (AGNs) by utilizing X-ray and infrared data has recently been developed. We carried out a survey of H2O maser emission toward 10 obscured AGNs with the Nobeyama 45 m telescope. We newly detected the maser emission with a signal-noise-ratio (SNR) of above 4 from two AGNs; NGC 1402 and NGC 7738. We also found a tentative detection with SNR> 3 in NGC 5037. The detection rate of 20% is higher than those of previous surveys (usually several percent).