Enhanced Activity of Mrk 421 for an extended period over 30 days measured by HAWC
ATel #12683; Jose Andres Garcia-Gonzalez (IF-UNAM), Israel Martinez (UMD), on behalf of the HAWC Collaboration
on 23 Apr 2019; 18:47 UT
Credential Certification: Israel Martinez (imc@umd.edu)
Subjects: Gamma Ray, TeV, VHE, Request for Observations, AGN, Blazar
In the last 30 days the HAWC observatory has observed an increased TeV gamma-ray emission from Markarian 421. During this period we have observed a series of flaring episodes, the highest one happening last night reaching a flux above 1TeV of (10.75 +/- 1.65) x 10^-11 (~ 6 equivalent Crab units) between 2019-04-23 00:23:11 and 2019-04-23 03:31:09 UTC. In ATel #12680 FACT also reports an enhanced flux of 3.7 times the flux of the Crab Nebula.
HAWC continuously monitors this source and will keep reporting in case the the enhance activity follows. Follow-up observations are encouraged.
All flux values are obtained from a maximum likelihood fit under the assumption of a fixed spectral shape with power law index of 2.2 and exponential cut-off at 5 TeV. A preliminary plot showing the source activity for the past 60 days may be found here. The HAWC contact people for this analysis are Jose Andres Garcia-Gonzalez (IF-UNAM, jagarcia@fisica.unam.mx) and Israel Martinez (UMD, imc@umd.edu).
HAWC is a TeV gamma ray water Cherenkov array located in the state of Puebla, Mexico, that monitors two thirds of the sky every day with an instantaneous field of view of ~2 sr.
