RT Journal Article T1 Search for very high energy gamma-rays from the z=0.896 quasar 4C+55.17 with the MAGIC telescopes A1 Antoranz Canales, Pedro A1 Barrio Uña, Juan Abel A1 Contreras González, José Luis A1 Fonseca González, María Victoria A1 López Moya, Marcos A1 Miranda Pantoja, José Miguel A1 Satalecka, Konstanzja A1 Scapin, Valeria AB The bright gamma-ray quasar 4C +55.17 is a distant source (z = 0.896) with a hard spectrum at GeV energies as observed by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on board the Fermi satellite. This source is identified as a good source candidate for very high energy (VHE; > 30 GeV) gamma-rays. In general, VHE gamma-rays from distant sources provide a unique opportunity to study the extragalactic background light (EBL) and underlying astrophysics. The flux intensity of this source in the VHE range is investigated. Then, constraints on the EBL are derived from the attenuation of gamma-ray photons coming from the distant blazar. We searched for a gamma-ray signal from this object using the 35 h observations taken by the MAGIC (Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov) telescopes between 2010 November and 2011 January. No significant VHE gamma-ray signal was detected. We computed the upper limits of the integrated gamma-ray flux at the 95 per cent confidence level of 9.4 x 10(-12) and 2.5 x 10(-12) cm(-2) s(-1) above 100 and 200 GeV, respectively. The differential upper limits in four energy bins in the range from 80 to 500 GeV are also derived. The upper limits are consistent with the attenuation predicted by low-flux EBL models on the assumption of a simple power-law spectrum extrapolated from LAT data. PB Wiley SN 0035-8711 YR 2014 FD 2014-05 LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/33626 UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/33626 LA eng NO © Wiley. We would like to thank the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias for the excellent working conditions at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos in La Palma. The support of the German BMBF and MPG, the Italian INFN, the Swiss National Fund SNF, and the Spanish MICINN is gratefully acknowledged. This work was also supported by the CPAN CSD2007-00042 and MultiDark CSD2009-00064 projects of the Spanish Consolider-Ingenio 2010 programme, by grant 127740 of the Academy of Finland, by the DFG Cluster of Excellence “Origin and Structure of the Universe”, by the DFG Collaborative Research Centers SFB823/C4 and SFB876/C3, and by the Polish MNiSzWgrant 745/N-HESSMAGIC/2010/0. NO German BMBF NO German MPG NO Italian INFN NO Swiss National Fund SNF NO Spanish MICINN NO Spanish Consolider-Ingenio 2010 progr NO Academy of Finland NO DFG Cluster of Excellence “Origin and Structure of the Universe” NO DFG Collaborative Research Center NO Polish MNiSzWgrant DS Docta Complutense RD 4 abr 2025