Detection of very-high-energy gamma-ray emission from B2 1811+31 with the MAGIC telescopes
ATel #14090; Oscar Blanch(IFAE-BIST), on behalf of the MAGIC collaboration
on 13 Oct 2020; 14:43 UT
Credential Certification: Oscar Blanch (blanch@ifae.es)
Subjects: Gamma Ray, TeV, VHE, Blazar
The MAGIC collaboration reports the first detection of very-high-energy (VHE; E>100 GeV) gamma-ray emission from the blazar B2 1811+31 (R.A.=18 13 35.2027 Dec.=+31 44 17.620, J2000.0). The object was detected in about 4.1 hours of total exposure integrated since 2020/10/04 and until 2020/10/10. The preliminary analysis of these data resulted in the detection of B2 1811+31 with a statistical significance of about 6 standard deviations. The VHE flux of this detection was estimated to be ~5 % of the flux from the Crab nebula above 100 GeV.
B2 1811+31, is a blazar located at redshift 0.117 (Giommi et al. 1991, ApJ, 378, 77) and classified as a BL Lac, belonging to the IBL subclass according to Laurent-Muehleisen, S. A., et al., (1999) ApJ, 525, 127. It was listed as one of the most promising VHE gamma-ray candidates in Fallah Ramazani, V., et al., (2017) A&A, 608, 68.
The MAGIC observations were triggered by the flaring activity in high energy gamma rays, reported by the Fermi-LAT collaboration (ATel #14060), and kindly communicated to the VHE community.
MAGIC observations on B2 1811+31 will continue during the next days, and multiwavelength observations are encouraged. The MAGIC contact persons for these observations are O.Blanch (blanch@ifae.es), G. Bonnoli (giacomo.bonnoli@unisi.it) and J. Sitarek (jsitarek@uni.lodz.pl).
MAGIC is a system of two 17m-diameter Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes located on 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.
