Observations of increased very-high-energy gamma-ray emission from 1ES1959+650 with the MAGIC telescopes
ATel #16939; David Paneque (Max Planck Institute for Physics), Axel Arbet-Engels (Max Planck Institute for Physics), Giacomo Bonnoli (INAF) and Jayant Abhir (ETH Zurich) , on behalf of the MAGIC collaboration
on 9 Dec 2024; 18:27 UT
Credential Certification: David Paneque (dpaneque@mppmu.mpg.de)
Subjects: Gamma Ray, TeV, VHE, Blazar
Following the recent detection of an X-ray flare reported by SVOM (ATel #16935), the MAGIC telescopes observed 1ES1959+650 (300.202 deg, 65.182, J2000.0) on Saturday 7th December 2024. The observations took place in sub-optimal conditions due to the high zenith distance of the source in the sky (between 50deg and 70deg) and the presence of a strong night-sky background light caused by the Moon. During the first hour, which is the part of the observations at the lowest zenith distance (below 60 deg), the preliminary and online analysis yielded a gamma-ray excess with a significance exceeding 8 sigma, indicating an enhanced state at TeV energies.
1ES1959+650 is a blazar located at redshift z = 0.048 (Perlman et al. 1996). It was first reported as a VHE emitter by the Utah Seven Telescope Array experiment (Nishiyama 1999). Since then, it has exhibited frequent flaring states at X-ray and VHE (see e.g., Krawczynski et al. 2004, MAGIC Collaboration et al. 2020). The X-ray state reported by SVOM seems comparable to the one during the notable very-high-energy (VHE) outburst of 2016 (MAGIC Collaboration et al. 2020).
The MAGIC contact persons for these observations are D.Paneque (dpaneque@mppmu.mpg.de), Axel Arbet-Engels (aarbet@mpp.mpg.de), Giacomo Bonnoli (giacomo.bonnoli@inaf.it) and Jayant Abhir (jabhir@phys.ethz.ch)
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.
