skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: FERMI GAMMA-RAY SPACE TELESCOPE OBSERVATIONS OF THE GAMMA-RAY OUTBURST FROM 3C454.3 IN NOVEMBER 2010

Journal Article · · Astrophysical Journal Letters
 [1]; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;  [2]; ; ;  [3];  [4];  [5]; ;  [6];  [7];  [8];  [9];  [10]
  1. National Research Council Research Associate, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC 20001 (United States)
  2. W. W. Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory, Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, Department of Physics and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 (United States)
  3. Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Pisa, I-56127 Pisa (Italy)
  4. Laboratoire AIM, CEA-IRFU/CNRS/Universite Paris Diderot, Service d'Astrophysique, CEA Saclay, 91191 Gif sur Yvette (France)
  5. Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Trieste, I-34127 Trieste (Italy)
  6. Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Padova, I-35131 Padova (Italy)
  7. Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Perugia, I-06123 Perugia (Italy)
  8. Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics, Department of Physics and Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California at Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 (United States)
  9. Dipartimento di Fisica 'M. Merlin' dell'Universita e del Politecnico di Bari, I-70126 Bari (Italy)
  10. Laboratoire Leprince-Ringuet, Ecole polytechnique, CNRS/IN2P3, Palaiseau (France)

The flat-spectrum radio quasar 3C454.3 underwent an extraordinary 5 day {gamma}-ray outburst in 2010 November when the daily flux measured with the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) at photon energies E > 100 MeV reached (66 {+-} 2) x 10{sup -6} photons cm{sup -2} s{sup -1}. This is a factor of three higher than its previous maximum flux recorded in 2009 December and {approx}> 5 times brighter than the Vela pulsar, which is normally the brightest source in the {gamma}-ray sky. The 3 hr peak flux was (85 {+-} 5)x10{sup -6} photons cm{sup -2} s{sup -1}, corresponding to an apparent isotropic luminosity of (2.1 {+-} 0.2)x10{sup 50} erg s{sup -1}, the highest ever recorded for a blazar. In this Letter, we investigate the features of this exceptional event in the {gamma}-ray band of the Fermi-LAT. In contrast to previous flares of the same source observed with the Fermi-LAT, clear spectral changes are observed during the flare.

OSTI ID:
21562657
Journal Information:
Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 733, Issue 2; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/733/2/L26; ISSN 2041-8205
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

Cited By (54)

The long-lasting activity of 3C 454.3: GASP-WEBT and satellite observations in 2008–2010 ⋆⋆⋆ journal October 2011
Limits on the extragalactic background light in the Fermi era journal June 2012
Identification of activity peaks in time-tagged data with a scan-statistics driven clustering method and its application to gamma-ray data samples journal July 2018
Long-term optical spectroscopic variations in blazar 3C 454.3 journal October 2019
THE SECOND CATALOG OF ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI DETECTED BY THE FERMI LARGE AREA TELESCOPE journal December 2011
A Tight Connection Between Gamma-Ray Outbursts and Parsec-Scale jet Activity in the Quasar 3c 454.3 journal August 2013
Turbulent, Extreme Multi-Zone Model for Simulating flux and Polarization Variability in Blazars journal December 2013
Constraining the Location of Gamma-Ray Flares in Luminous Blazars journal June 2014
THE SMARTS MULTI-EPOCH OPTICAL SPECTROSCOPY ATLAS (SaMOSA): AN ANALYSIS OF EMISSION LINE VARIABILITY IN SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE FERMI BLAZARS journal April 2015
Hints of an axion-like particle mixing in the GeV gamma-ray blazar data? journal November 2013
Long-term Multiband Study of High-redshift Blazar S5 0836+71 journal December 2018
Radio and γ-ray follow-up of the exceptionally high-activity state of PKS 1510−089 in 2011 journal November 2012
Exploring the multiband emission of TXS 0536+145: the most distant γ-ray flaring blazar journal September 2014
On the origin of gamma-rays in Fermi blazars: beyondthe broad-line region journal May 2018
Investigating the multiwavelength behaviour of the flat spectrum radio quasar CTA 102 during 2013–2017 journal October 2019
Leptonic modelling of Ton 599 in flare and quiescent states journal December 2019
Opacity, variability, and kinematics of AGN jets journal March 2019
Temporal correlation between the optical and γ-ray flux variations in the blazar 3C 454.3 journal April 2019
The GENJI Programme: Gamma-Ray Emitting Notable AGN Monitoring by Japanese VLBI journal April 2013
Gamma-ray Emitting Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 Galaxies: Past, Present, and Future text January 2019
Physics of “Cold” Disk Accretion onto Black Holes Driven by Magnetized Winds journal January 2019
Kinematics of Parsec-scale Jets of Gamma-Ray Blazars at 43 GHz within the VLBA-BU-BLAZAR Program journal September 2017
Exploring the Variability of the Flat Spectrum Radio Source 1633+382. I. Phenomenology of the Light Curves journal January 2018
Optical and Gamma-Ray Variability Behaviors of 3C 454.3 from 2006 to 2011 journal March 2018
On the Multiwavelength Emission from CTA 102 journal August 2018
Fermi -Large Area Telescope Observations of the Brightest Gamma-Ray Flare Ever Detected from CTA 102 journal October 2018
Temporal Variability and Estimation of Jet Parameters for Ton 599 journal October 2018
The Powerful Jet and Gamma-Ray Flare of the Quasar PKS 0438–436 journal December 2018
Detection of a Gamma-Ray Flare from the High-redshift Blazar DA 193 journal February 2019
The 2016 June Optical and Gamma-Ray Outburst and Optical Microvariability of the Blazar 3C 454.3 journal April 2019
Characterizing the Gamma-Ray Variability of the Brightest Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars Observed with the Fermi LAT journal May 2019
Exploring the Origin of Multiwavelength Activities of High-redshift Flat-spectrum Radio Quasar PKS 1502+106 during 2014–2018 journal August 2019
Multiscale Time- and Frequency-domain Likelihood Analysis with Photon Weights journal November 2019
Long-term Variability and Correlation Study of the Blazar 3C 454.3 in the Radio, NIR, and Optical Wavebands journal December 2019
MINUTE-TIMESCALE >100 MeV γ -RAY VARIABILITY DURING THE GIANT OUTBURST OF QUASAR 3C 279 OBSERVED BY FERMI -LAT IN 2015 JUNE journal June 2016
Short-timescale γ -Ray Variability in CTA 102 journal February 2018
Gamma-ray emitting narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies: Past, present, and future journal October 2019
Limits on the extragalactic background light in the Fermi era
  • Meyer, Manuel; Raue, Martin; Mazin, Daniel
  • HIGH ENERGY GAMMA-RAY ASTRONOMY: 5th International Meeting on High Energy Gamma-Ray Astronomy, AIP Conference Proceedings https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4772332
conference January 2012
Minute-Timescale > 100 MeV $\gamma$-Ray Variability During the Giant Outburst of Quasar 3C 279 Observed by FERMI-LAT in 2015 June text January 2016
The long-lasting activity of 3C 454.3. GASP-WEBT and satellite observations in 2008-2010 text January 2011
Limits on the extragalactic background light in the Fermi era text January 2012
GENJI Programme: Gamma-ray Emitting Notable AGN Monitoring by Japanese VLBI text January 2012
Radio and gamma-ray follow-up of the exceptionally high activity state of PKS 1510-089 in 2011 text January 2012
Hints of an axion-like particle mixing in the GeV gamma-ray blazar data? text January 2013
A Tight Connection between Gamma-Ray Outbursts and Parsec-Scale Jet Activity in the Quasar 3C 454.3 text January 2013
Constraining the Location of Gamma-Ray Flares in Luminous Blazars text January 2014
Identification of activity peaks in time-tagged data with a scan-statistics driven clustering method and its application to gamma-ray data samples text January 2018
On the origin of gamma rays in Fermi blazars: beyond the broad line region text January 2018
On the multi-wavelength Emission from CTA 102 text January 2018
Fermi-Large Area Telescope observations of the brightest Gamma-ray flare ever detected from CTA 102 text January 2018
Opacity, variability and kinematics of AGN jets text January 2018
The June 2016 Optical and Gamma-Ray Outburst and Optical Micro-Variability of the Blazar 3C454.3 text January 2019
Investigating the multiwavelength behaviour of the flat spectrum radio quasar CTA 102 during 2013-2017 text January 2019
Long term variability and correlation study of the blazar 3C 454.3 in radio, NIR and optical wavebands text January 2019