The High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory (HAWC) is a large field of view ($\sim$2sr) instrument sensitive to very-high energy gamma rays ($\sim$0.5-100TeV). It is located in central Mexico (19$^\circ$N) and has a high duty cycle ($\sim$95%). These characteristics allow it to continuously monitor $\sim$2/3 of the sky, looking for transient events, such as flares from Active Galactic Nuclei or possibly other unknown phenomena. Presented here is an unbiased real-time monitoring on hours timescales which provides daily flux measurements for all locations in our observable sky promptly after they leave our field of view. These measurements are then used to follow known TeV sources and to perform a blind search. The alerts generated from these analyses, some of which have been made public through the Astronomer's Telegraph, can trigger small field of view instruments, enabling deep observations of sources during their high state activity which can constrain acceleration mechanisms. Additionally, these measurements allow us to respond quickly to external alerts.
Large-amplitude modulations and hours-timescale variability in the early X-ray light curve of a tidal disruption flare
Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik(马克斯·普朗克地外物理研究所);Università degli Studi di Milano(米兰大学);INFN, Sezione di Milano-Bicocca(意大利国家核物理研究院米兰-比可卡分部);Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center, Polish Academy of Sciences(波兰科学院尼古拉·哥白尼天文学中心);International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research - Curtin University(西澳大学国际射电天文研究中心);Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam(波茨坦莱布尼茨天体物理研究所)
The HAWC Collaboration has observed gamma rays at energies above 56 TeV from a collection of nine sources. It has been suggested that this emission could be hadronic in nature, requiring that these systems accelerate cosmic-ray protons or nuclei up to PeV-scale energies. In this paper, we instead show that the spectra of these objects favor a leptonic (inverse Compton) origin for their emission. More specifically, the gamma-ray emission from these objects can be straightforwardly accommodated within a model in which $\sim \mathcal{O}(10\%)$ of the host pulsar's spindown power is transferred in…
Constraining the Photon Intensity of Extragalactic Background Light with the HAWC Observatory for the Blazar Mrk 421
Instituto de Física, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México(墨西哥国立自治大学物理研究所);Universidad Autónoma de Chiapas(恰帕斯自治大学);Instituto de Astronomía, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México(墨西哥国立自治大学天文学研究所);Universidad de Costa Rica(哥斯达黎加大学);Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo(米却肯圣尼古拉斯德伊达尔戈大学);Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University(密歇根州立大学物理与天文系);Temple University(天普大学)
The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Gamma-Ray Observatory surveys the very high energy sky in the 300 GeV to $>100$ TeV energy range. HAWC has detected two blazars above $11σ$, Markarian 421 (Mrk 421) and Markarian 501 (Mrk 501). The observations are comprised of data taken in the period between June 2015 and July 2018, resulting in a $\sim 1038$ days of exposure. In this work we report the time-averaged spectral analysis for both sources above 0.5 TeV. Taking into account the flux attenuation due to the extragalactic background light (EBL), the intrinsic spectrum of Mrk 421 is described …
Recently, gamma-ray halos of a few degree extension have been detected around two middle-aged pulsars, namely, Geminga and PSR B0656+14, by the High Altitude Water Cherenkov observatory (HAWC). The gamma-ray radiation arise from relativistic electrons that escape the pulsar wind nebula and diffuse in the surrounding medium. The diffusion coefficient is found to be significantly lower than the average value in the Galactic disk. If so, given a typical transverse velocity of $300-500{\,\rm km /s}$ for a pulsar, its displacement could be important in shaping the morphology of its gamma-ray halos.…
Sub-relativistic Outflow and Hours-Timescale Large-amplitude X-ray Dips during Super-Eddington Accretion onto a Low-mass Massive Black Hole in the Tidal Disruption Event AT2022lri
The propagation of radio waves from distant compact radio sources through turbulent interstellar plasma in our Galaxy causes these sources to twinkle, a phenomenon called interstellar scintillation. Such scintillations are a unique probe of the micro-arcsecond structure of radio sources as well as of the sub-AU-scale structure of the Galactic interstellar medium. Weak scintillations (i.e. an intensity modulation of a few percent) on timescales of a few days or longer are commonly seen at centimetre wavelengths and are thought to result from the line-of-sight integrated turbulence in the inters…
1H 0323+342 is optically one of the nearest and brightest very radio loud narrow line Seyfert 1 galaxies (vRL NLSy1). It is also one of the first vRLNLSy1s detected at gamma-ray energies by the Fermi-LAT. We report the results of monitoring the optical flux of 1H 0323+342 during more than six and a half years. In some cases, we, for the first time, simultaneously use two telescopes to monitor the optical flux of 1H 0323+342 on timescales ranging from minutes to hours, demonstrating the reality of low amplitude microvariability whole events with durations of a few hours for this object. Based o…
We present the results from an Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder search for radio variables on timescales of hours. We conducted an untargeted search over a 30 deg$^2$ field, with multiple 10-hour observations separated by days to months, at a central frequency of 945 MHz. We discovered six rapid scintillators from 15-minute model-subtracted images with sensitivity of $\sim 200\,μ$Jy/beam; two of them are extreme intra-hour variables with modulation indices up to $\sim 40\%$ and timescales as short as tens of minutes. Five of the variables are in a linear arrangement on the sky with…
VASTER: The ASKAP real-time fast-imaging pipeline -- overview and discovery of two long period transients
Swinburne University of Technology(斯威本科技大学);The University of Sydney(悉尼大学);CSIRO Space and Astronomy(澳大利亚联邦科学与工业研究组织空间与天文部);University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee(威斯康星大学密尔沃基分校);Curtin University(科廷大学)