Issue |
A&A
Volume 519, September 2010
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | L6 | |
Number of page(s) | 4 | |
Section | Letters | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201014499 | |
Published online | 15 September 2010 |
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Very high-energy
-ray emission from
IC 310
A. Neronov1 - D. Semikoz2,3 - Ie. Vovk1
1 - ISDC Data Centre for Astrophysics, Ch. d'Ecogia 16, 1290 Versoix,
Switzerland
2 - APC, 10 rue Alice Domon et Leonie Duquet, 75205 Paris Cedex 13,
France
3 - Institute for Nuclear Research RAS, 60th October Anniversary prosp.
7a, Moscow 117312, Russia
Received 25 March 2010 / Accepted 14 July 2010
Abstract
Context. We search for persistent extragalactic
sources of -rays
with energies above 100 GeV with the Fermi
telescope.
Aims. We construct a systematic survey of the
extragalactic -ray
sky at energies above 100 GeV. Such a survey has not been done
before by the ground-based Cherenkov
-ray telescopes, which have,
contrary to Fermi, a narrow field of view.
Methods. We study a map of arrival directions of the
highest energy photons detected by Fermi at
Galactic latitudes
and search for significant point-source-like excesses above the diffuse
Galactic and extragalactic
-ray backgrounds. We identify
eight significant point-source-like excesses in this map.
Results. Seven of the eight sources are known TeV
blazars. The previously unknown source is identified with the galaxy
IC 310, which is situated in Perseus cluster of galaxies. The
source is detected with a significance
above 30 GeV. We identify two possible scenarii for
-ray
emission from this source. One possibility is that emission originates
from the base of relativistic outflow from the active nucleus, as in
the BL Lacs and FR I type radio galaxies. Otherwise
-ray photons
could be produced at the bow shock that is formed as a result of the
fast motion of the galaxy through the intracluster medium. The two
models could be distinguished through studying of the
-ray signal
variability.
Key words: gamma rays: galaxies - galaxies: active - galaxies: individual: IC 310
1 Introduction
The number of known astronomical sources of very-high-energy (VHE)
![[*]](/icons/foot_motif.png)









![]() |
Figure 1:
Fermi count maps of the sky region around the
center of Perseus cluster in 1-10 GeV ( left),
10-100 GeV ( center) and
100-300 GeV ( right) energy bands. The
position of Fermi source
1GFL J0319.7+4130 is marked by the ellipse corresponding the
uncertainty of the source position (95% confidence level). The green
circle of the radius |
Open with DEXTER |
Contrary to the ground-based Cherenkov -ray telescopes, Fermi
has a wide field-of-view and continuously surveys the whole sky on a
timescale of 3.2 h. Over the first year of operation Fermi
has detected some
Galactic and extragalactic sources of
-rays with energies above
1 GeV (Abdo
et al. 2010). The smaller collection area of Fermi
(
1 m2,
compared to
105 m2
for the ground-based
-ray
telescopes) prevents an extension of the all-sky monitoring with Fermi
to the VHE
-ray
band.
However, the collection area of Fermi is
still sufficient for detecting the brightest -ray sources at the energies
above 100 GeV. The power of the all-sky monitoring
capabilities of Fermi at the highest energies was
clearly demonstrated by discoveries of new VHE
-ray sources motivated by Fermi
detections of these sources above 10 GeV (Ong 2009,2010).
The all-sky survey capabilities of space-based
-ray telescope EGRET at the
energies above 10 GeV were used for the search of new VHE
-ray blazars
by Dingus
& Bertsch (2001); Gorbunov et al. (2005)
via cross-correlation of arrival directions of highest energy EGRET
photons with positions of known sources.
Below we use Fermi data to produce a
survey of extragalactic sky at the energies above 100 GeV,
i.e. in the energy range accessible for the ground-based -ray
telescopes. We find that most of the sources visible with Fermi
at the energies above 100 GeV are known TeV blazars. The only
source which has not previously been reported as a VHE
-ray source
turns out to be IC 310, which is a head-tail radio galaxy (Sijbring & de Bruyn 1998)
with possibly a BL Lac type nucleus (Rector
et al. 1999).
Two radio galaxies have previously been reported to be the
sources of
-rays with
energies above 100 GeV: M 87 (Aharonian et al. 2006a; Albert
et al. 2008; Acciari et al. 2009)
and Cen A (Aharonian
et al. 2009). These two sources are the two closest
Fanaroff-Riley type I (FR I) radio galaxies. The
FR I radio galaxies form the ``parent'' population of
BL Lac type blazars (Urry
& Padovani 1995). They are expected to be weak VHE
-ray
emitters, because the
-ray
flux from these sources is not boosted by the relativistic Doppler
effect. In this respect it is not surprising that only the two nearest
FR I radio galaxies have been seen in the VHE
-ray band so
far. Both Cen A and M 87 are too weak to be detected
at 100 GeV in the 1.5 yr exposure of Fermi.
IC 310 is situated in Perseus galaxy cluster at the
distance of 80 Mpc, which is a factor of 22
and 5 larger than the distances of Cen A and
M 87, respectively. IC 310 is, therefore, by 1-2
orders of magnitude more luminous than that of Cen A and
M 87. Besides, IC 310 is not classified as a
FR I type radio galaxy. Instead, it is a head-tail radio
galaxy (Sijbring & de Bruyn
1998), the type of galaxies usually found in galaxy clusters.
It possesses an extended ``tail'' of the angular size 15' aligned
along the direction connecting the center of Perseus cluster and the
galaxy. This tail is believed to be produced as a result of the fast
motion of the galaxy through the intracluster medium (Sarazin 1988).
The detection of IC 310 in the VHE band looks less surprising
if the hypothesis that the source hosts a low-luminosity
BL Lac is adopted (Rector
et al. 1999). In this case the mechanisms of VHE
-ray
emission from the source could be the same as in the majority of
extragalactic VHE
-ray
sources.
2 Survey of extragalactic sky above 100 GeV with Fermi.
We used the data of large area telescope (LAT) on board the Fermi
satellite to generate an all-sky map of arrival directions of -rays with
energies above 100 GeV. The entire list of photons detected by
Fermi in this energy range included
4145 events, collected over the period from
2008 August 4 till
2010 February 14. A substantial fraction of the
events is produced by emission from diffuse and point sources along the
plane of the Galaxy. In our analysis of extragalactic sources we
exclude the region
from the point source search. This leaves 2603 photons
available for the analysis.
To identify significant point sources we first selected
clusters of three and more events within circles of the radius ,
corresponding to the 68% containment radius of the LAT point spread
function at energies above 100 GeV
.
For each cluster we calculated the probability to find the observed
number of events within the angular resolution circle by chance. To do
this, we calculated the overall number N10
of events within a circle of 10 degrees radius around
the cluster. The chance probability to find a second event within a
around the first event is
.
The chance probability to find a cluster of at least K0.1
events within a circle of the radius
is then
The chance probability P100-300
of finding clusters of
events in the 100-300 GeV energy band is less than 10-5
everywhere in the extragalactic sky. The list of
excesses found at Galactic latitudes
is given in Table 1.
In the same table we also give the number of
-rays within the circle of the
radius
,
which corresponds to the 95% containment radius of LAT PSF above
100 GeV. In principle, the estimate of the chance probability
of finding a cluster of
3
photons in the background events could be improved if known Fermi
sources are removed from the background. However, the only <102 photons
with energies above 100 GeV could be associated to the known Fermi
sources (Neronov et al. 2010),
which means that the correction introduced by ``masking'' the known
sources in the background estimates would be small.
All but one detected clusters of
events listed in Table 1
could be identified with the known TeV blazars. The only source that
does not belong to the blazar class and was not previously detected in
the VHE energy band is the source #2 at
.
Table 1:
Catalog of -ray
sources detected by LAT at energies above 100 GeV at
.
3 VHE
-ray
emission from IC 310
The excess at the position of source #2 has three photons at
energies above 100 GeV. The chance probability that such an
excess is due to a chance coincidence is ruled out with probability ,
which corresponds to a
significance of the source detection above 100 GeV.
Fermi images of the sky region around
source #2 are shown in Fig. 1. The new
source is situated approximately
to the southwest from the bright Fermi source 1FGL
J0319.7+4130, which is identified with the radio galaxy
NGC 1275 in the center of Perseus galaxy cluster. The spectrum
of the new source is harder than the spectrum of NGC 1275, so
that emission from NGC 1275 dominates in the 1-10 GeV
energy band, while emission from the new source dominates the signal
above 100 GeV.
At energies above 30 GeV, 95% of events from a point
source are contained in a circle of the radius .
This means that events from the bright source 1FGL J0319.7+4130 do not
affect the signal from the newly detected source
away. Taking this into account, we included events with energies above
30 GeV in the analysis. We found two more events from the
source within the
search circle in the 30-100 GeV band. To calculate the
probability P30-100
of finding two additional events at the source position one can use
modification of the expression for the 100-300 GeV band with a
substitution
and
.
Doing this we find
.
The probability to find
additional photons in the 30-100 GeV to a cluster of
3 photons
in the 100-300 GeV band is
(which corresponds to
for Gaussian statistics). Equivalently, the combined probability to
find a 3.9 and 4.5
excess in the two bands is
,
which corresponds to the significance of source detection at the level
of
(integrating the probability density outside constant likelihood
contour for Gaussian statistics).
In order to verify the detection of the source with Fermi,
we performed a standard Fermi analysis
for the sky region containing IC 310. In this analysis we used
photons with energies between 10 GeV and 300 GeV,
collected from a circular area with a radius of 5 degrees around the
position of IC 310. We included all sources mentioned in the
Fermi first year catalog (Abdo
et al. 2010) for this region of the sky. All the
sources had freely varying normalizations and spectral indices. We
assumed that the spectra of all the sources included in the likelihood
analysis had power-law shape.
![]() |
Figure 2: Map of the TS values for an additional source near NGC 1275 at energies above 10 GeV. The white contour corresponds to the 95% uncertainty of the source position. |
Open with DEXTER |
The likelihood analysis has resulted in the detection of
IC 310 with the test statistic (TS) (Mattox
et al. 1996) value of 53, which corresponds to
approximately
source detection significance and is compatible with the
source detection significance found from the direct photon counting
above 30 GeV. Figure 2 shows the map
of TS values generated with gtlike tool by varying
the position of the source on the grid of 12 by
12 positions with a 0.1 degree step. The uncertainty of the
source position found from the TS map is also compatible with the one
found from the direct photon counting.
Figure 3
shows a comparison of the Fermi image above 100 GeV with the
images of the same region of the sky in X-ray (ROSAT
all sky survey) and radio (WENSS survey Rengelink et al. 1997)
bands obtained through the SkyView interface
.
The radio and X-ray source at the position of the new
-ray source
is the galaxy IC 310, which is a part of Perseus cluster.
There are no other bright radio or X-ray sources within the
degree circle around the position of the
-ray source. This provides an
unambiguous identification of the source with IC 310.
![]() |
Figure 3: Image of Perseus galaxy cluster in radio band from WENSS sky survey ( left), in the X-ray band from the ROSAT all sky survey ( middle) and the Fermi image in the 100-300 GeV energy band ( right). The green contours on the right panel correspond to the radio image from the left panel. |
Open with DEXTER |
In order to estimate the flux from the source in the
30-300 GeV energy range, we calculated the exposure of Fermi/LAT
in the direction of the source in this energy band with the gtexposure
tool. Collecting the photons from the 95% containment circles of the
energy-dependent point spread function for the front and back-converted
photons (Abdo et al.
2009), we find the estimates of the source flux in two energy
bins, 30-100 GeV and 100-300 GeV are erg/(cm2s)
and
erg/(cm2s),
respectively. These estimates are shown in Fig. 4 together with the
multiwavelength data on IC 310 collected from the NASA
Extragalactic Database
.
At energies below 30 GeV, the signal from
NGC 1275 could give a non-zero number of photons at the
position of the new source. In order to estimate the background at the
source position we adopted the following procedure. We have chosen
three ``background'' circular regions of the radius
situated at the same angular distance from NGC 1275 as the new
source, but at the position angles
and
,
with respect to the direction from NGC 1275 toward the new
source. The signal of NGC 1275 should give approximately the
same number of counts in the three ``background'' regions and in the
``source'' region, which we choose to be a circle of the radius
around the source position. We found that the signal in the source
circle is compatible at
level
with the signal in the background regions in the energy bins
1-3 GeV, 3-10 GeV and 10-30 GeV, see
Fig. 4.
4 Discussion
Known VHE -ray
loud active galactic nuclei (AGN) are divided into several classes.
Most of the sources are BL Lacs, which are relativistically
beamed versions of Fanaroff-Riley type I radio galaxies. Two of the
detected sources are the nearest FR I radio galaxies
themselves (M87 and Cen A). One source, 3C 279, belongs to the
flat spectrum radio quasar (FSRQ) class. Unless IC 310 proves
to be a weak BL Lac type object, the detection of VHE
-ray
emission from a head-tail radio galaxy provides a new class of
extragalactic VHE
-ray
sources. If the interpretation of the source as a weak BL Lac (Rector et al. 1999) is
adopted, the source still has unusual properties due to its unusual for
BL Lacs radio morphology and host galaxy (lenticular, instead
of a giant elliptical) (Nilson 1973).
In FR I radio galaxies and BL Lacs the VHE -ray
emission is most probably produced in the innermost part of the jet
that is ejected by the supermassive black hole. For IC 310, it
is not clear a priori if the
-ray emission is powered by
the same mechanism. An alternative possibility is that
-rays are
produced at the bow shock formed in interaction of relativistic outflow
from the fast moving galaxy with the intracluster medium. In this
respect, the IC 310 - Perseus cluster system might be similar
to a much smaller scale PSR B1259-63 system, in which
-ray
emission is produced at the bow shock formed in interaction of
relativistic outflow from a pulsar moving through a dense wind of a
companion star (Tavani & Arons
1997).
![]() |
Figure 4: Spectral energy distribution of IC 310. Grey points are taken from NED. Black points are Fermi measurements. |
Open with DEXTER |
Angular resolution of -ray
telescopes is only marginally sufficient to resolve the bow shock
surface in the IC 310 - Perseus cluster system. The angular
length of the ``tail'' of the bow shock visible in the radio band is
15'. The
uncertainty of the Fermi source position is
4', which is
smaller than the length of the tail. The Fermi data
indicate that most of the
-ray
emission is produced in the ``head'' part of the source (see
Fig. 3).
At the same time, the Fermi angular resolution is
not sufficient to distinguish between emission from the ``head'' of the
bow shock and the emission from the base of the jet near the
supermassive black hole, which powers the source activity.
The crucial test, which would allow to distinguish between the
two mechanisms would be the (non) detection of variability of -ray
emission from the source. Indeed, in the BL Lac type models
the
-ray
emission is expected to be variable at different timescales, down to
the timescale of light-crossing of the central supermassive black hole.
On the other hand, if the observed
-ray emission is produced at
the bow-shaped contract surface between the AGN outflow and the
intracluster medium, the
-ray
source has
kpc
scale size. This means that the
-ray emission could not be
variable on timescales much shorter than
103 yr.
Variability of the -ray signal from
IC 310 could not be studied with Fermi,
which has detected only five
-rays from the source at
energies above 30 GeV. We verified that the five detected
events did not come within a narrow time window, which would indicate
the possibility of a strong flare from the source.
The presence or absence of variability of the VHE -ray
emission from IC 310 could be readily verified in observations
with ground based
-ray
telescopes. A previous observation of the region around Perseus cluster
with Whipple telescope has resulted in an upper limit one the source
flux (Perkins et al. 2006).
However, this upper limit is comparable to the Fermi
measurement of the source flux, so that no conclusion about the
presence or absence of long-term variability of the source could be
drawn from the comparison of Whipple and Fermi
observations. It is clear that observations of the source with the new
generation of ground-based
-ray telescopes VERITAS or
MAGIC (the source is in the northern hemisphere, not easily accessible
for HESS) would give much higher signal statistic at energies above
100 GeV, so that the hypothesis of the flux variability could
be easily tested
.
From Fig. 3
it is immediately clear that not every head-tail radio galaxy in the
Perseus cluster emits in the VHE -ray band at the Fermi
sensitivity level. The image of the cluster, shown in this figure,
includes another prototypical head-tail galaxy, NGC 1265. This
source is clearly identified in the radio band, but, contrary to
IC 310, does not show significant X-ray and VHE
-ray
emission. A comparison of the physical parameters of IC 310
and NGC 1265 (e.g. velocity through the intracluster medium,
overall power of relativistic outflow etc.) could help to clarify the
conditions under which particle acceleration and VHE
-ray
emission in this type of sources occurs.
This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation grant PP00P2_123426/1. We thank L. Foschini for discussions of the subject.
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Footnotes
- ... years
- See e.g. http://tevcat.uchicago.edu/, http://www.mppmu.mpg.de/ rwagner/sources/.
- ... 100 GeV
- http://www-glast.slac.stanford.edu/software/IS/glast_lat_performance.htm
- ... analysis
- http://fermi.gsfc.nasa.gov/ssc/data/analysis/scitools
- ... survey
- http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/cgi-bin/rosat/rosat-survey
- ... interface
- http://skyview.gsfc.nasa.gov/
- ... Database
- http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/
- ... tested
- Following the discovery of the source above 100 GeV with Fermi, the detection in the same energy band was confirmed by the MAGIC telescope (Mariotti 2010).
All Tables
Table 1:
Catalog of -ray
sources detected by LAT at energies above 100 GeV at
.
All Figures
![]() |
Figure 1:
Fermi count maps of the sky region around the
center of Perseus cluster in 1-10 GeV ( left),
10-100 GeV ( center) and
100-300 GeV ( right) energy bands. The
position of Fermi source
1GFL J0319.7+4130 is marked by the ellipse corresponding the
uncertainty of the source position (95% confidence level). The green
circle of the radius |
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
![]() |
Figure 2: Map of the TS values for an additional source near NGC 1275 at energies above 10 GeV. The white contour corresponds to the 95% uncertainty of the source position. |
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
![]() |
Figure 3: Image of Perseus galaxy cluster in radio band from WENSS sky survey ( left), in the X-ray band from the ROSAT all sky survey ( middle) and the Fermi image in the 100-300 GeV energy band ( right). The green contours on the right panel correspond to the radio image from the left panel. |
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
![]() |
Figure 4: Spectral energy distribution of IC 310. Grey points are taken from NED. Black points are Fermi measurements. |
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
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