Exceptional NIR flare in gamma-ray loud FSRQ PKS B1424-418
ATel #11235; R. Nesci (INAF/IAPS Roma), R. Ojha (NASA/GSFC/UMBC), M. Kadler (Wuerzburg Univ.)
on 26 Jan 2018; 21:09 UT
Credential Certification: Roberto Nesci (Roberto.Nesci@iaps.inaf.it)
Subjects: Infra-Red, Gamma Ray, AGN, Blazar
The gamma-ray loud flat spectrum radio quasar PKS 1424-418 has been
steadily increasing its luminosity since August 2017 and is now
(2018-01-21) at its historic recorded maximum of J=13.73 +/- 0.05. These
observations were performed with the REM telescope in La Silla within
the framework the TANAMI collaboration
(http://pulsar.sternwarte.uni-erlangen.de/tanami/) monitoring of a
sample of gamma-ray loud southern hemisphere blazars.
Photometry was made with IRAF/apphot using 10 comparison stars from the 2MASS catalog.
Our NIR light curve is very well correlated with the gamma-ray light
curve publicly available from the Large Area Telescope (LAT)
instrument on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (see
https://fermi.gsfc.nasa.gov/ssc/data/access/lat/msl_lc/). A gamma-ray
flare was also recently reported by AGILE (ATel#11222).
Our NIR/optical monitoring will continue at least for the current year
and possible further activity will be reported using this and other
platforms.
We note that this source, during a previous multiwavelength outburst, has provided a high-energy fluence high enough to explain the IC35 `Big Bird' neutrino (Aartsen et al. 2014, Phys. Rev. Letters 113, 101,101; Kadler et al. 2016, Nature Phys. 12, 807). We encourage multi-messenger observations and analyses of PKS 1424-418 during this active state.
