Discovery of a new TeV gamma-ray source: VER J0521+211
Abstract
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.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1308.5017,
title = {Discovery of a new TeV gamma-ray source: VER J0521+211},
author = {VERITAS Collaboration and S. Archambault and T. Arlen and T. Aune and M. Beilicke and W. Benbow and R. Bird and A. Bouvier and J. H. Buckley and V. Bugaev and K. Byrum and A. Cesarini and L. Ciupik and M. P. Connolly and W. Cui and M. Errando and A. Falcone and S. Federici and Q. Feng and J. P. Finley and L. Fortson and A. Furniss and N. Galante and D. Gall and G. H. Gillanders and S. Griffin and J. Grube and G. Gyuk and D. Hanna and J. Holder and G. Hughes and T. B. Humensky and P. Kaaret and M. Kertzman and Y. Khassen and D. Kieda and H. Krawczynski and F. Krennrich and S. Kumar and M. J. Lang and A. S Madhavan and G. Maier and P. Majumdar and S. McArthur and A. McCann and J. Millis and P. Moriarty and R. Mukherjee and A. O'Faolain de Bhroithe and R. A. Ong and A. N. Otte and N. Park and J. S. Perkins and M. Pohl and A. Popkow and H. Prokoph and J. Quinn and K. Ragan and L. C. Reyes and P. T. Reynolds and G. T. Richards and E. Roache and D. B. Saxon and G. H. Sembroski and A. W. Smith and D. Staszak and I. Telezhinsky and M. Theiling and A. Varlotta and V. V. Vassiliev and S. Vincent and S. P. Wakely and T. C. Weekes and A. Weinstein and R. Welsing and D. A. Williams and B. Zitzer and M. Bottcher and S. J. Fegan and P. Fortin and J. P. Halpern and Y. Y. Kovalev and M. L. Lister and J. Liu and A. B. Pushkarev and P. S. Smith},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1308.5017},
year = {2013}
}
Comments
10 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables. Accepted by The Astrophysical Journal