MAGIC detects an increased activity from PKS 1510-089 at very high energy gamma-rays

ATel #7542; Razmik Mirzoyan (Max-Planck-Institute for Physics, Munich), on behalf of the MAGIC collaboration
on 20 May 2015; 19:25 UT
Credential Certification: Razmik Mirzoyan (Razmik.Mirzoyan@mpp.mpg.de)

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The MAGIC telescopes have observed an increase in the Very High Energy (VHE; >100 GeV) gamma-ray flux from PKS 1510-089 (RA=15 12 50.5, Dec=-09 06 00, J2000.0). The preliminary analysis of the MAGIC data taken from 2015/05/18 to 2015/05/19 shows a highly significant signal and a flux of ~20% from that of the Crab nebula above 100 GeV. This implies an increase by a factor of ~5 with respect to the flux reported previously in 2012. PKS 1510-089 is a FSRQ at z=0.36 and it is regularly monitored by MAGIC. The source is also active in the high energy gamma-ray band as seen by Fermi-LAT ( http://fermi.gsfc.nasa.gov/ssc/data/access/lat/msl_lc/source/1510-089 ), and in optical band as reported by the Tuorla blazar monitoring program (http://users.utu.fi/kani/1m, R=14.75 on 2015/05/19). ATels #7495 and #7466 also report an increase in the IR brightness. We have also triggered ToO observations with the Swift satellite, which did not show any substantial enhancement in the X-ray flux (http://www.swift.psu.edu/monitoring/source.php?source=PKS1510-089). MAGIC observations on PKS1510-089 will continue during the following nights, and multi-wavelength observations are encouraged. The MAGIC contact persons for these observations are R. Mirzoyan (Razmik.Mirzoyan@mpp.mpg.de) and E. Lindfors (elilin@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.