1112.4302 (L. Pacciani et al.)

The flaring blazars of the first 1.5 years of the AGILE mission    [PDF]

L. Pacciani, A. Bulgarelli, A. W. Chen, F. D'Ammando, I. Donnarumma, A. Giuliani, F. Longo, G. Pucella, M. Tavani, S. Vercellone, V. Vittorini, A. Argan, G. Barbiellini, F. Boffelli, P. Caraveo, P. W. Cattaneo, V. Cocco, E. Costa, G. De Paris, E. Del Monte, G. Di Cocco, Y. Evangelista, A. Ferrari, M. Feroci, M. Fiorini, T. Froysland, F. Fuschino, M. Galli, F. Gianotti, C. Labanti, I. Lapshov, F. Lazzarotto, P. Lipari, M. Marisaldi, M. Mastropietro, S. Mereghetti, E. Morelli, E. Moretti, A. Morselli, A. Pellizzoni, F. Perotti, G. Piano, P. Picozza, M. Pilia, G. Porrovecchio, M. Prest, M. Rapisarda, A. Rappoldi, A. Rubini, S. Sabatini, P. Soffitta, M. Trifoglio, A. Trois, E. Vallazza, A. Zambra, D. Zanello, L. A. Antonelli, S. Colafrancesco, P. Giommi, C. Pittori, F. Verrecchia, P. Santolamazza, L. Salotti

We report the AGILE gamma-ray observations and the results of the multiwavelength campaigns on seven flaring blazars detected by the mission: During two multiwavelength campaigns, we observed gamma-ray activity from two Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars of the Virgo region, e.g. 3C 279 and 3C 273 (the latter being the first extragalactic source simultaneously observed with the gamma-ray telescope and the hard X ray imager of the mission). Due to the large FOV of the AGILE/GRID instrument, we achieved an almost continuous coverage of the FSRQ 3C 454.3. The source showed flux above 10E-6 photons/cm2/s (E > 100 MeV) and showed day by day variability during all the AGILE observing periods. In the EGRET era, the source was found in high gamma-ray activity only once. An other blazar, PKS 1510-089 was frequently found in high gamma-ray activity. S5 0716+71, an intermediate BL Lac object, exhibited a very high gamma-ray activity and fast gamma-ray variability during a period of intense optical activity. We observed high gamma-ray activity from W Comae, a BL Lac object, and Mrk 421, an high energy peaked BL Lac object. For this source, a multiwavelength campaign from optical to TeV has been performed.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.4302