[en] Here, we report on multiwavelength observations of the blazar PKS 0537-441 (z = 0.896) obtained from microwaves through γ-rays by Submillimeter Array, Rapid Eye Mounting, Automatic Telescope for Optical Monitoring (ATOM), Swift and Fermi mostly during 2008 August–2010 April. Strong variability has been observed in γ-rays, with two major flaring episodes (2009 July and 2010 March) and a harder-when-brighter behaviour, quite common for flat spectrum radio quasars and low-synchrotron-peaked BL Lacertae objects (BL Lacs), in 2010 March. In the same way, the spectral energy distribution (SED) of the source cannot be modelled by a simple synchrotron self-Compton model, as opposed to many BL Lacs, but the addition of an external Compton component of seed photons from a dust torus is needed. The 230 GHz light curve showed an increase simultaneous with the γ-ray one, indicating co-spatiality of the mm and γ-ray emission region likely at large distance from the central engine. The low, average, and high activity SED of the source could be fit changing only the electron distribution parameters, but two breaks in the electron distribution are necessary. The ensuing extra spectral break, located at near-infrared (NIR)–optical frequencies, together with that in γ-rays seem to indicate a common origin, most likely due to an intrinsic feature in the underlying electron distribution. An overall correlation between the γ-ray band with the R band and K band has been observed with no significant time lag. On the other hand, when inspecting the light curves on short time-scales some differences are evident. In particular, flaring activity has been detected in NIR and optical bands with no evident γ-ray counterparts in 2009 September and November. Moderate variability has been observed in X-rays with no correlation between flux and photon index. Finally, an increase of the detected X-ray flux with no counterpart at the other wavelengths has been observed in 2008 October, suggesting once more a complex correlation between the emission at different energy bands.

[en] The TANAMI program has been observing parsec-scale radio jets of southern (declination south of - 30°) γ-ray bright AGN, simultaneously with Fermi/LAT monitoring of their γ-ray emission, via high-resolution radio imaging with Very Long Baseline Interferometry techniques. In this paper, we present the radio and γ-rayproperties of the TANAMI sources based on one year of contemporaneous TANAMI and Fermi/LAT data. A large fraction (72%) of the TANAMI sample can be associated with bright γ-ray sources for this time range. Association rates differ for different optical classes with all BL Lacs, 76% of quasars, and just 17% of galaxies detected by the LAT. Upper limits were established on the γ-ray flux from TANAMI sources not detected by LAT. This analysis led to the identification of three new Fermi sources whose detection was later confirmed. The γ-ray and radio luminosities are related by L_γ ∝ L_r"0"."8"9"±"0"."0"4. The brightness temperatures of the radio cores increase with the average γ-ray luminosity and the presence of brightness temperatures above the inverse Compton limit implies strong Doppler boosting in those sources. The undetected sources have lower γ/radio luminosity ratios and lower contemporaneous brightness temperatures. Finally, unless the Fermi/LAT-undetected blazars are much γ-ray-fainter than the Fermi/LAT-detected sources, their γ-ray luminosity should not be significantly lower than the upper limits calculated here.

[en] GLAST is the next generation telescope for the study of the Gamma Ray Universe. The GLAST mission is composed of two instruments: the LAT (Large Area Telescope) exploring the energy range between 20 MeV and 300 GeV and the GBM (Gamma ray Burst Monitor) studying the region from 10 KeV up to 30 MeV.GLAST represents an important step beyond EGRET providing a large improvement in instrument performance: large Field of View (FOV), large energy range extending to unexplored region of energies larger than 10 GeV, large effective area, a factor of 30 improvement in sensitivity, a much smaller dead time and a very good Point Spread Function (PSF).Since GLAST will operate in a continuous scanning mode, for most of the time during the mission, photons from a source will be detected at different angles in the LAT field of view requiring a good PSF in order to disentangle between sources.We will present results on PSF studies performed with various sets of data. The selection criteria and algorithm have been initially developed on DC1 and DC2 data (simulation of one and 55 days respectively of data collected by the LAT), applied to the data collected with the 16 LAT towers during the I and T integration phase with cosmic ray muons and finally applied to the testbeam data collected in August 2006 at the CERN beam line

[en] We summarize some results obtained in recent years by the Whole Earth Blazar Telescope (WEBT) to highlight its potential and describe its observing strategy to support GLAST observations

[en] We present the results from a multiwavelength campaign conducted in August 2006 of the powerful γ-ray quasar PKS 1510--089 (z = 0.361). This campaign commenced with a deep Suzaku observation lasting three days for a total exposure time of 120 ks, and continued with Swift monitoring over 18 days. Besides Swift observations, which sampled the optical/UV flux in all 6 UVOT filters as well as the X-ray spectrum in the 0.3--10 keV energy range, the campaign included ground-based optical and radio data, and yielded a quasi-simultaneous broad-band spectral energy distribution from 109 Hz to 1019 Hz. Thanks to its low instrumental background, the Suzaku observation provided a high S/N X-ray spectrum, which is well represented by an extremely hard power-law with photon index Γ≅1.2, augmented by a soft component apparent below 1 keV, which is well described by a black-body model with temperature kT ≅0.2 keV. Monitoring by Suzaku revealed temporal variability which is different between the low and high energy bands, again suggesting the presence of a second, variable component in addition to the primary power-law emission. We model the broadband spectrum of PKS 1510--089 assuming that the high energy spectral component results from Comptonization of infrared radiation produced by hot dust located in the surrounding molecular torus. In the adopted internal shock scenario, the derived model parameters imply that the power of the jet is dominated by protons but with a number of electrons/positrons exceeding a number of protons by a factor ∼ 10. We also find that inhomogeneities responsible for the shock formation, prior to the collision may produce bulk-Compton radiation which can explain the observed soft X-ray excess and possible excess at ∼ 18 keV. We note, however, that the bulk-Compton interpretation is not unique, and the observed soft excess could arise as well via some other processes discussed briefly in the text

[en] Context. We present that spectral energy distribution and its variability are basic tools for understanding the physical processes operating in active galactic nuclei (AGN). Aims. In this paper we report the results of a one-year near-infrared (NIR) and optical monitoring of a sample of 22 AGN known to be gamma-ray emitters, aimed at discovering correlations between optical and gamma-ray emission. Methods. We observed our objects with the Rapid Eye Mount (REM) telescope in J,H,K, and R bands nearly twice every month during their visibility window and derived light curves and spectral indexes. We also analyzed the gamma-ray data from the Fermi gamma-ray Space Telescope, making weekly averages. Results. Six sources were never detected during our monitoring, proving to be fainter than their historical Two micron all sky survey (2MASS) level. All of the sixteen detected sources showed marked flux density variability, while the spectral indexes remained unchanged within our sensitivity limits. Steeper sources showed, on average, a larger variability. From the NIR light curves we also computed a variability speed index for each detected source. Only one source (PKS 0208-512) underwent an NIR flare during our monitoring. Half of the sources showed a regular flux density trend on a one-year time scale, but do not show any other peculiar characteristic. The broadband spectral index α_r_o appears to be a good proxy of the NIR spectral index only for BL Lac objects. No clear correlation between NIR and gamma-ray data is evident in our data, save for PKS 0537-441, PKS 0521-360, PKS 2155-304, and PKS 1424-418. In conclusion, the gamma-ray/NIR flux ratio showed a large spread, QSO being generally gamma-louder than BL Lac, with a marked correlation with the estimated peak frequency (ν_p_e_a_k) of the synchrotron emission.

[en] Blazars constitute the most enigmatic class of extragalactic γ-ray sources, and their observational features have been ascribed to a relativistic jet closely aligned to the line of sight. They are generally divided in two main classes: the BL Lac objects (BL Lacs) and the flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs). In the case of BL Lacs the double-bumped spectral energy distribution (SED) is generally described by the synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) emission, while for the FSRQs it is interpreted as due to external Compton (EC) emission. Recently, we showed that in the [3.4]-[4.6]-[12] μm color-color diagram the blazar population covers a distinct region (i.e., the WISE blazar Strip (WBS)) clearly separated from the other extragalactic sources that are dominated by thermal emission. In this paper, we investigate the relation between the infrared and γ-ray emission for a subset of confirmed blazars from the literature, associated with Fermi sources, for which WISE archival observations are available. This sample is a proper subset of the sample of sources used previously, and the availability of Fermi data is critical to constrain the models on the emission mechanisms for the blazars. We found that the selected blazars also lie on the WBS covering a narrower region of the infrared color-color planes than the overall blazar population. We then found an evident correlation between the IR and γ-ray spectral indices expected in the SSC and EC frameworks. Finally, we determined the ratio between their γ-ray and infrared fluxes, a surrogate of the ratio of powers between the inverse Compton and the synchrotron SED components, and used such parameter to test different blazar emitting scenarios.

[en] One of the main scientific objectives of the ongoing Fermi mission is unveiling the nature of unidentified γ-ray sources (UGSs). Despite the major improvements of Fermi in the localization of γ-ray sources with respect to the past γ-ray missions, about one-third of the Fermi-detected objects are still not associated with low-energy counterparts. Recently, using the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer survey, we discovered that blazars, the rarest class of active galactic nuclei and the largest population of γ-ray sources, can be recognized and separated from other extragalactic sources on the basis of their infrared (IR) colors. Based on this result, we designed an association method for the γ-ray sources to recognize if there is a blazar candidate within the positional uncertainty region of a generic γ-ray source. With this new IR diagnostic tool, we searched for γ-ray blazar candidates associated with the UGS sample of the second Fermi γ-ray LAT catalog (2FGL). We found that our method associates at least one γ-ray blazar candidate as a counterpart to each of 156 out of 313 UGSs analyzed. These new low-energy candidates have the same IR properties as the blazars associated with γ-ray sources in the 2FGL catalog.

[en] The identification of low-energy counterparts for γ-ray sources is one of the biggest challenges in modern γ-ray astronomy. Recently, we developed and successfully applied a new association method to recognize γ-ray blazar candidates that could be possible counterparts for the unidentified γ-ray sources above 100 MeV in the second Fermi Large Area Telescope Catalog. This method is based on the infrared colors of the recent Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) all-sky survey. In this Letter, we applied our new association method to the case of unidentified INTEGRAL sources (UISs) listed in the fourth soft gamma-ray source catalog. Only 86 UISs out of the 113 can be analyzed due to the sky coverage of the WISE Preliminary Data Release. Among these 86 UISs, we found that 18 appear to have a γ-ray blazar candidate within their positional error region. Finally, we analyzed Swift archival data available for 10 out of these 18 γ-ray blazar candidates, and we found that 7 out of 10 are clearly detected in soft X-rays and/or in the optical-ultraviolet band. We cannot confirm the associations between the UISs and the selected γ-ray blazar candidates due to the discrepancies between the INTEGRAL and the soft X-ray spectra. However, the discovery of the soft X-ray counterparts for the selected γ-ray blazar candidates adds an important clue to help us understand their origin and to confirm their blazar nature.

[en] The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), as the next generation ground-based very high-energy gamma-ray observatory, is defining new areas beyond those related to physics. It is also creating new demands on the control and data acquisition system. CTA will consist of two installations, one in each hemisphere, containing tens of telescopes of different sizes. The ACTL (array control and data acquisition) system will consist of the hardware and software that is necessary to control and monitor the CTA array, as well as to time-stamp, read-out, filter and store the scientific data at aggregated rates of a few GB/s. The ACTL system must implement a flexible software architecture to permit the simultaneous automatic operation of multiple sub-arrays of telescopes with a minimum personnel effort on site. In addition ACTL must be able to modify the observation schedule on timescales of a few tens of seconds, to account for changing environmental conditions or to prioritize incoming scientific alerts from time-critical transient phenomena such as gamma-ray bursts. This contribution summarizes the status of the development of the software architecture and the main design choices and plans. (paper)