Related papers: Understanding the spectrum of a distant blazar PKS…
Very high energy (VHE) $\gamma$-rays above 10$'$s of GeV energy, emitted from distant blazars, are attenuated by photons from the extragalactic background light (EBL). Unfortunately, neither the EBL nor the intrinsic blazar spectrum is…
PKS0447-439 is one of the BL Lacertae objects that have been detected at very high energy. There has been a recent report of a lower limit of z>1.246 for the redshift of this blazar, challenging the current paradigm in which very…
We report results of a spectroscopic campaign carried out at the 10 m Gran Telescopio Canarias for a sample of 22 BL Lac objects detected (or candidates) at TeV energies, aimed to determine or constrain their redshift. This is of…
The determination of the redshift of extragalactic gamma ray sources is of fundamental importance for the interpretation of their emission models and extragalactic population studies, AGN classification schemes, and to study the interaction…
The study of the Extragalactic Background Light (EBL) is crucial to understand many astrophysical problems (as the formation of first stars, the evolution of galaxies and the role of dust emission). At present, one of the most powerful ways…
Recently, a new method to constrain the distances of blazars with unknown redshift using combined observations in the GeV and TeV regimes has been developed. The underlying assumption is that the Very High Energy (VHE, E > 100 GeV) spectrum…
The flat-spectrum radio quasar PKS 1441+25 at a redshift of z = 0.940 is detected between 40 and 250 GeV with a significance of 25.5 {\sigma} using the MAGIC telescopes. Together with the gravitationally lensed blazar QSO B0218+357 (z =…
The large majority of sources detected by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope are blazars, belonging in particular to the blazar subclass of BL Lacertae objects (BL Lacs). BL Lacs often have featureless optical spectra, which make it…
We present a measurement of the extragalactic background light (EBL) based on a joint likelihood analysis of 32 gamma-ray spectra for 12 blazars in the redshift range z = 0.03 to 0.944, obtained by the MAGIC telescopes and Fermi-LAT. The…
The diffuse extragalactic background light consists of the sum of the starlight emitted by galaxies through the history of the Universe, and it could also have an important contribution from the first stars, which may have formed before…
Ground-based observatories have been collecting 0.2 - 20 TeV gamma rays from blazars for about twenty years. These gamma rays can experience absorption along the line of sight due to interactions with the extragalactic background light…
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…
Gamma-rays propagating through space are likely to be extinguished via electron-positron pair production off of the ambient extragalactic background light (EBL). The spectrum of the EBL is produced by starlight (and starlight reprocessed by…
The very high energy (VHE) gamma-ray spectral indices of blazars show strong correlation with the source redshift. Absence of any such correlation in low energy gamma rays and X-rays indicate the presence of Extragalactic Background Light…
The Fermi Gamma-ray Observatory discovered about a thousand extragalactic sources emitting energy from 100 MeV to 100 GeV. The majority of these sources belong to the class of blazars characterized by a quasi-featureless optical spectrum…
The extragalactic high-energy $\gamma$-ray sky is dominated by blazars, which are active galactic nuclei with their jets pointing towards us. Distance measurements are of fundamental importance yet for some of these sources are challenging…
High redshift blazars are among the most powerful non-explosive sources in the Universe and play a crucial role in understanding the evolution of relativistic jets. To understand these bright objects, we performed a detailed investigation…
The detection of TeV gamma-rays from the blazar H 1426+428 at an integral flux level of (4 +- 2(stat) +- 1(syst)) 10^(-12) erg cm^(-2) s^(-1) above 1 TeV with the HEGRA imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope system is reported. H 1426+428…
The VERITAS collaboration has approved long-term observations on several distant, hard-spectrum blazars. We present first results from VERITAS long-term observations of 1ES1218+304, 1ES0229+200, and 1ES0414+009. Gamma-ray observations of…
The attenuation of high-energy gamma-ray spectrum due to the electron-positron pair production against the extragalactic background light (EBL) provides an indirect method to measure the EBL of the universe. We use the measurements of the…