Discovery of a new TeV gamma-ray source: VER J0521+211

VERITAS Collaboration: S. Archambault , T. Arlen , T. Aune , M. Beilicke , W. Benbow , R. Bird , A. Bouvier , J. H. Buckley

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V. Bugaev K. Byrum A. Cesarini L. Ciupik M. P. Connolly W. Cui M. Errando A. Falcone S. Federici Q. Feng J. P. Finley L. Fortson A. Furniss N. Galante D. Gall G. H. Gillanders S. Griffin J. Grube G. Gyuk D. Hanna J. Holder G. Hughes T. B. Humensky P. Kaaret M. Kertzman Y. Khassen D. Kieda H. Krawczynski F. Krennrich S. Kumar M. J. Lang A. S Madhavan G. Maier P. Majumdar S. McArthur A. McCann J. Millis P. Moriarty R. Mukherjee A. O'Faolain de Bhroithe R. A. Ong A. N. Otte N. Park J. S. Perkins M. Pohl A. Popkow H. Prokoph J. Quinn K. Ragan L. C. Reyes P. T. Reynolds G. T. Richards E. Roache D. B. Saxon G. H. Sembroski A. W. Smith D. Staszak I. Telezhinsky M. Theiling A. Varlotta V. V. Vassiliev S. Vincent S. P. Wakely T. C. Weekes A. Weinstein R. Welsing D. A. Williams B. Zitzer M. Bottcher S. J. Fegan P. Fortin J. P. Halpern Y. Y. Kovalev M. L. Lister J. Liu A. B. Pushkarev P. S. Smith

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classification 🌌 astro-ph.HE astro-ph.CO

keywords observationsj0521sourcefluxgamma-rayopticaldiscoveryenergies

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We report the detection of a new TeV gamma-ray source, VER J0521+211, based on observations made with the VERITAS imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope array. These observations were motivated by the discovery of a cluster of >30GeV photons in the first year of Fermi-LAT observations. VER J0521+211 is relatively bright at TeV energies, with a mean photon flux of 1.93 +/- 0.13_stat +/- 0.78_sys 10^-11 cm-2 s-1 above 0.2 TeV during the period of the VERITAS observations. The source is strongly variable on a daily timescale across all wavebands, from optical to TeV, with a peak flux corresponding to ~0.3 times the steady Crab Nebula flux at TeV energies. Follow-up observations in the optical and X-ray bands classify the newly-discovered TeV source as a BL Lac-type blazar with uncertain redshift, although recent measurements suggest z=0.108. VER J0521+211 exhibits all the defining properties of blazars in radio, optical, X-ray, and gamma-ray wavelengths.

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Discovery of a new TeV gamma-ray source: VER J0521+211

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