Fermi LAT Detection of a new gamma-ray source Fermi J0713+5739

ATel #10149; Bryce Carpenter (NASA/GSFC/CUA) and Roopesh Ojha (NASA/GSFC/UMBC), on behalf of the Fermi Large Area Telescope Collaboration
on 7 Mar 2017; 20:14 UT
Credential Certification: Roopesh Ojha (Roopesh.Ojha@gmail.com)

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The Large Area Telescope (LAT), one of the two instruments on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, has observed strong gamma-ray emission from a new source. The preliminary best-fit location of this gamma-ray source (RA=108.33 deg, Dec=57.66 deg, J2000) has a 95% containment radius of 0.12 deg (errors are statistical only) for observations on Mar 5, 2017. This source is not in any published LAT catalog and was not detected by AGILE or EGRET. The closest candidate counterpart is the candidate radio/X-ray blazar RX J0712.3+5719 (SHBL J071219.0+571948, BZB J0712+5719) with coordinates RA=108.07792 deg, Dec=57.32278 deg (J2000; Bauer et al., 2000, ApJS, 129, 547), at an angular distance of 0.37 deg.

Preliminary analysis indicates that on Mar 5, 2017, the daily averaged flux (E>100MeV) was (0.29+/-0.03)E-6 photons cm^-2 s^-1 (errors are statistical only). The corresponding daily averaged photon index of the source was (1.85+/-0.07) which is harder than typical values for LAT-detected blazars.

Because Fermi operates in an all-sky scanning mode, regular gamma-ray monitoring of this source will continue. We encourage further multifrequency observations of this source. For this source the Fermi LAT contact person is Bryce Carpenter (carpbr01@gmail.com).

The Fermi LAT is a pair conversion telescope designed to cover the energy band from 20 MeV to greater than 300 GeV. It is the product of an international collaboration between NASA and DOE in the U.S. and many scientific institutions across France, Italy, Japan and Sweden.