%0 Journal Article
%A Antoranz Canales, Pedro
%A Barrio Uña, Juan Abel
%A Contreras González, José Luis
%A Fonseca González, María Victoria
%A Miranda Pantoja, José Miguel
%A Nieto Castaño, Daniel
%T Very-high-energy gamma rays from a distant quasar: how transparent is the universe?
%D 2008
%@ 0036-8075
%U https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/50832
%X The atmospheric Cherenkov gamma- ray telescope MAGIC, designed for a low- energy threshold, has detected very- high- energy gamma rays from a giant flare of the distant Quasi- Stellar Radio Source ( in short: radio quasar) 3C 279, at a distance of more than 5 billion light- years ( a redshift of 0.536). No quasar has been observed previously in very- high- energy gamma radiation, and this is also the most distant object detected emitting gamma rays above 50 gigaelectron volts. Because high- energy gamma rays may be stopped by interacting with the diffuse background light in the universe, the observations by MAGIC imply a low amount for such light, consistent with that known from galaxy counts.
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