RT Journal Article
T1 Very-high-energy gamma rays from a distant quasar: how transparent is the universe?
A1 Antoranz Canales, Pedro
A1 Barrio Uña, Juan Abel
A1 Contreras González, José Luis
A1 Fonseca González, María Victoria
A1 Miranda Pantoja, José Miguel
A1 Nieto Castaño, Daniel
AB 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.
PB Amer Assoc Advancement Science
SN 0036-8075
YR 2008
FD 2008-06-27
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/50832
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/50832
LA eng
NO © American Association for the Advancement of Science. We thank the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias for the excellent working conditions at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos in La Palma, Canary Islands. The support of the German Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung and Max-Planck Gesellschaft, the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) and Spanish Centro de nvestigación Científica y Technologia is gratefully acknowledged. This work was also supported by ETH (research grant TH 34/043) and the Polish MNil (grant 1P03D01028).
NO German Bundesministerium für Bildung
NO German Forschung and Max-Planck Gesellschaft
NO Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN)
NO Spanish Centro de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica
NO ETH
NO Polish MNil
DS Docta Complutense
RD 7 abr 2025