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MAGIC detection of increased activity from FSRQ 3C 279 at very-high-energy gamma rays

ATel #11545; Razmik Mirzoyan (Max-Planck-Institute for Physics, Munich), on behalf of the MAGIC collaboration
on 18 Apr 2018; 18:40 UT
Credential Certification: Adrian Biland (biland@phys.ethz.ch)

Subjects: Gamma Ray, TeV, VHE, AGN, Blazar

Referred to by ATel #: 11572, 11680

The MAGIC telescopes observed an increase in the very-high-energy (VHE; >100 GeV) gamma-ray flux from FSRQ 3C 279 at radio coordinates R.A.=194.04652737 deg and Dec= -5.78931242 deg, J2000.0 (Fey et al. 2004, AJ, 127, 3587). The preliminary analysis of MAGIC data (1h) taken during the night between 2018/04/17 and 2018/04/18 (MJD 58225-58226) yields a detection with a statistical significance of more than 9 standard deviations, and indicates an integral flux of (1.2 +/- 0.2)e-10 cm^-2 s-1 above 100 GeV. The estimated flux corresponds to 25% of the Crab Nebula integral flux above the same energy threshold (100 GeV). 3C 279 is a FSRQ located at redshift 0.5362 (Marziani et al. 1996, ApJS, 104, 37) which was first detected as a VHE emitter in 2006 (MAGIC collaboration et al. 2008, Science, 320, 1752). The source was reported in high state by Fermi-LAT on April 17 (ATel #11542), a factor of almost 25 times greater than the average value reported in the third Fermi-LAT catalog (3FGL, Acero F., et al., 2015, ApJS, 218, 23). MAGIC observations on 3C 279 will continue during the next days and multiwavelength observations are encouraged. The MAGIC contact persons for these observations are R. Mirzoyan (Razmik.Mirzoyan@mpp.mpg.de) , J. Becerra (jbecerra@iac.es) and V. Fallah Ramazani (vafara@utu.fi). MAGIC is a system of two 17m-diameter Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes located at the Canary island of La Palma, Spain, and designed to perform gamma-ray astronomy in the energy range from 50 GeV to greater than 50 TeV.