DAMPE detection of a GeV gamma-ray flare from blazar 3C 279
ATel #11246; Zun-Lei Xu (PMO), Neng-Hui Liao (PMO), Kai-Kai Duan (PMO), Yun-Feng Liang (PMO),Jin Chang (PMO), Yi-Zhong Fan (PMO), Simone Garrappa (INFN/Perugia), Wei Jiang(PMO),Shi-Jun Lei (PMO), Xiang Li (PMO),Maria Munoz Salinas(UNIGE),Zhao-Qiang Shen (PMO), Meng Su (HKU/PMO), Qiang Yuan (PMO), Peng-Fei Zhang(PMO) ,Stephan Zimmer (UNIGE) on behalf of the DAMPE collaboration
on 31 Jan 2018; 02:27 UT
Credential Certification: Zun-Lei Xu (xuzl@pmo.ac.cn)
Subjects: Gamma Ray, >GeV, AGN, Blazar
Referred to by ATel #: 11464
The DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE), has detected an intense gamma-ray flare from a source positionally coincident with the flat spectrum radio quasar 3C 279 with redshift of z=0.5362 (Marziani et al. 1996, ApJS, 104, 37) and coordinates of R.A.: 12h56m11.1665s, Dec: -05d47m21.523s ((J2000.0, Johnston et al. 1995, AJ, 110, 880).
DAMPE has recorded increased number of photons since January 16th, 2018 UT. The preliminary analysis gives a peak daily flux of ~(6.45 +/- 3.63) x 10^-7 photons cm^-2 s^-1 above 2 GeV, recorded on January 17th, 2018 UT. The daily light curve shows significant variabilities. The search for past data of DAMPE reveals relatively low state emission in the past two years when the source was in the field-of-view.
DAMPE is operating in the survey mode, and the monitoring of 3C 279 will continue.
Detection of flaring activities of 3C 279 was also reported in the gamma-ray band with H.E.S.S. (ATel #11239), Fermi-LAT (ATel #11189) and AGILE (ATel #11200), as well as in the optical band (ATels #11190, #11196, #11202, #11216).
DAMPE is a space-borne calorimeter detector of high energy cosmic rays and gamma-rays. The energy range coverage is from 1 GeV to 10 TeV for gamma-rays. More information about DAMPE can be found at http://www.space.pmo.cas.cn/.
