Bibcode
Vandenbroucke, J.; Buehler, R.; Ajello, M.; Bechtol, K.; Bellini, A.; Bolte, M.; Cheung, C. C.; Civano, F.; Donato, D.; Fuhrmann, L.; Funk, S.; Healey, S. E.; Hill, A. B.; Knigge, C.; Madejski, G. M.; Romani, R. W.; Santander-García, M.; Shaw, M. S.; Steeghs, D.; Torres, M. A. P.; Van Etten, A.; Williams, K. A.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Volume 718, Issue 2, pp. L166-L170 (2010).
Advertised on:
8
2010
Citations
22
Refereed citations
17
Description
The Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) discovered a new gamma-ray source
near the Galactic plane, Fermi J0109+6134, when it flared brightly in
2010 February. The low Galactic latitude (b = -1fdg2) indicated that the
source could be located within the Galaxy, which motivated rapid
multi-wavelength follow-up including radio, optical, and X-ray
observations. We report the results of analyzing all 19 months of LAT
data for the source, and of X-ray observations with both Swift and the
Chandra X-ray Observatory. We determined the source redshift, z = 0.783,
using a Keck Low-Resolution Imaging Spectrometer observation. Finally,
we compiled a broadband spectral energy distribution (SED) from both
historical and new observations contemporaneous with the 2010 February
flare. The redshift, SED, optical line width, X-ray absorption, and
multi-band variability indicate that this new GeV source is a blazar
seen through the Galactic plane. Because several of the optical emission
lines have equivalent width >5 Å, this blazar belongs in the
flat-spectrum radio quasar category.