Fermi LAT detection of a GeV flare from BZU J0742+5444
ATel #3196; Davide Donato (NASA/GSFC); on behalf of the Fermi Large Area Telescope Collaboration.
on 27 Feb 2011; 22:06 UT
Credential Certification: Davide Donato (davide.donato-1@nasa.gov)
Subjects: >GeV, AGN, Blazar, Quasar
The Large Area Telescope (LAT), one of the two instruments on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, has observed a bright gamma-ray flare from a source positionally consistent with the flat spectrum radio source, 87GB 073840.5+545138 = BZU J0742+5444 (RA: 07h42m39.8s, Dec: +54d44m25s, J2000, A. J. Beasley et al. 2002, ApJS, 141, 13) with z=0.72 (J. Halpern et al. 2003, AJ, 125, 572).
Preliminary analysis indicates that on February 26, 2011 the source was in a high state with a gamma-ray flux (E>100MeV) of (1.2+/-0.3) x 10^-6 ph cm^-2 s^-1 (error is statistical only). This value represents an increase of a factor of ~20 with respect to the flux in the 1FGL catalog (Abdo et al. 2010, ApJS, 188, 405), which reports the average flux from August 2008 through June 2009.
Because Fermi operates in an all-sky scanning mode, regular gamma-ray monitoring of this source will continue. The Fermi LAT contact person for this source is Davide Donato (donato@milkyway.gsfc.nasa.gov).
The Fermi LAT is a pair conversion telescope designed to cover the energy band from 20 MeV to greater than 300 GeV. It is the product of an international collaboration between NASA and DOE in the U.S. and many scientific institutions across France, Italy, Japan and Sweden.
