Related papers: Is the Universe More Transparent to Gamma Rays Tha…
The bright gamma-ray quasar 4C +55.17 is a distant source ($z = 0.896$) with a hard spectrum at GeV energies as observed by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on board the {{\it Fermi}} satellite. This source is identified as a good source…
Between 2004 and 2009 a sample of 28 X-ray selected high- and intermediate-frequency peaked blazars with a X-ray flux larger than 2 uJy at 1 keV in the redshift range from 0.018 to 0.361 was observed with the MAGIC telescope at energies…
We calculate the absorption of 10-500 GeV gamma-rays at high redshifts. This calculation requires the determination of the high-redshift evolution of the intergalactic starlight photon field, including its IR-UV spectral energy…
An anomalously large transparency of the Universe to gamma rays has recently been discovered by the Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) H.E.S.S. and MAGIC. We show that observations can be reconciled with standard blazar…
Of the blazars detected by EGRET in GeV gamma rays, 3C 279 is not only the best-observed by EGRET, but also one of the best-monitored at lower frequencies. We have assembled eleven spectra, from GHz radio through GeV gamma rays, from the…
The EGRET experiment aboard the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (CGRO) has observed at energies above 100 MeV strong gamma-ray flares with short-term time variability from the gamma-ray blazars 3C 279 and PKS 1622-297. During these flaring…
Bright and fast gamma-ray flares with hard spectra have been recently detected from the blazar 3C 279, with apparent GeV luminosities up to $10^{49}$ erg/s. The source is observed to flicker on timescales of minutes with no comparable…
In the first week of December 2009, the blazar 3C 454.3 became the brightest high energy source in the sky. Its photon flux reached and surpassed the level of 1e-5 ph/cm2/s above 100 MeV. The Swift satellite observed the source several…
The propagation of very high energy gamma-rays ($E>100$~GeV) over cosmological distances is suppressed by pair-production processes with the ubiquitous extra-galactic soft photon background, mainly in the optical to near infra-red. The…
Here is reviewed our current understanding of Galactic and extragalactic diffuse gamma-ray emission. The spectrum of the extragalactic gamma-ray background above 30 MeV can be well described by a power law with photon index s=2.1. In the…
Recent observations with the low threshold Cherenkov telescopes proved that sub-TeV gamma-rays are able to arrive from active galaxies at relatively large distances in spite of expected severe absorption in the extragalactic background…
The extragalactic background light (EBL) is the radiation accumulated through the history of the Universe in the wavelength range from the ultraviolet to the far infrared. Local foregrounds make the direct measurement of the diffuse EBL…
Recent findings by gamma-ray Cherenkov telescopes suggest a higher transparency of the Universe to very-high-energy (VHE) photons than expected from current models of the Extragalactic Background Light. It has been shown that such…
3C 66A is an intermediate-frequency peaked BL Lacertae object of uncertain redshift. We report recent observations of the region around the blazar with the MAGIC telescopes. The source was observed and detected in 2009 December and 2010…
The Extragalactic Background Light (EBL) includes photons with wavelengths from ultraviolet to infrared, which are effective at attenuating gamma rays with energy above ~10 GeV during propagation from sources at cosmological distances. This…
The expected opacity of the intergalactic space limits the mean free path of TeV gamma rays to dozens of Megaparsecs. However, TeV photons from numerous more distant sources have been detected. This might be interpreted, in each particular…
During its cycle-1 observation period, between April 2005 and March 2006, the MAGIC telescope was able to observe nine Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) events since their early beginning. Other observations were performed during the following months…
The Extragalactic Background Light (EBL) from the infrared (IR) through the ultraviolet (UV) is dominated by emission from stars, either directly or through absorption and reradiation by dust. It can thus give information on the star…
The Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (CGRO) experiments EGRET and COMPTEL observed the Virgo sky region continuously for 7 weeks between December 10, 1996 and January 28, 1997. The prominent quasar 3C~273 was found to be the brightest source…
We report the AGILE detection and the results of the multifrequency follow-up observations of a bright $\gamma$-ray flare of the blazar 3C 279 in June 2015. We use AGILE-GRID and Fermi-LAT $\gamma$-ray data, together with Swift-XRT,…