Bibcode
Dominis Prester, D.; Sitarek, J.; Becerra, J.; Buson, S.; Lindfors, E.; Manganaro, M.; Mazin, D.; Nievas Rosillo, M.; Nilsson, K.; Stamerra, A.; Tavecchio, F.; Vovk, Ie.; MAGIC Collaboration; Fermi LAT Collaboration
Bibliographical reference
New Frontiers in Black Hole Astrophysics, Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union, IAU Symposium, Volume 324, pp. 235-236
Advertised on:
2017
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Description
The blazar QSO B0218+357 is the first gravitationally lensed blazar
detected in the very high energy (VHE, E > 100 GeV) gamma-ray
spectral range (Ahnen et al. 2016). It is gravitationally lensed by the
intervening galaxy B0218+357G (z l = 0.68466 +/- 0.00004,
Carilli et al. 1993), which splits the blazar emission into two
components, spatially indistinguishable by gamma-ray instruments, but
separated by a 10-12 days delay. In July 2014 a flare from QSO B0218+357
was observed by the Fermi-LAT (Large Area Telescope, Atwood et al. 2009,
Ackermann et al. 2012), and followed-up by the MAGIC (Major Atmospheric
Gamma Imaging Cherenkov) telescopes, a stereoscopic system of two 17m
Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes located on La Palma, Canary
Islands (Aleksić et al. 2016a, 2016b), during the expected time
of arrival of the delayed component of the emission. MAGIC could not
observe the leading image due to the Full Moon. The MAGIC and Fermi-LAT
observations were accompanied by optical data from KVA telescope at La
Palma, and X-ray observations by Swift-XRT (Fig. 1 left). Variability in
gamma-rays was of the order of one day, while no variability correlated
with gamma-rays was observed at lower energies. The flux ratio of the
leading to trailing image in HE gamma-rays was larger than in the flare
of QSO B0218+357 observed by Fermi-LAT in 2012 (Cheung et al. 2014).
Changes in the observed flux ratio can be caused by gravitational
microlensing on individual stars in the host galaxy (Neronov et al.
2015), or by other compact objects like for ex. clumps in giant
molecular clouds (Sitarek & Bednarek 2016).