Abstract
We report on VERITAS observations of the BL Lac object B2 1215+30 between 2008 and 2012. During this period, the source was detected at very high energies (VHEs; E > 100 GeV) by VERITAS with a significance of 8.9σ and showed clear variability on timescales larger than months. In 2011, the source was found to be in a relatively bright state and a power-law fit to the differential photon spectrum yields a spectral index of 3.6 ± 0.4stat ± 0.3syst with an integral flux above 200 GeV of (8.0 ± 0.9stat ± 3.2syst) × 10-12 cm-2 s -1. No short term variability could be detected during the bright state in 2011. Multi-wavelength data were obtained contemporaneously with the VERITAS observations in 2011 and cover optical (Super-LOTIS, MDM, Swift/UVOT), X-ray (Swift/XRT), and gamma-ray (Fermi-LAT) frequencies. These were used to construct the spectral energy distribution (SED) of B2 1215+30. A one-zone leptonic model is used to model the blazar emission and the results are compared to those of MAGIC from early 2011 and other VERITAS-detected blazars. The SED can be reproduced well with model parameters typical for VHE-detected BL Lac objects.
Original language | English (US) |
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Article number | 92 |
Journal | Astrophysical Journal |
Volume | 779 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 20 2013 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research is supported by grants from the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution, by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) in Canada, by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI 10/RFP/AST2748), and by the Science and Technology Facilities Council in the UK. The research presented in this Letter has used data from the Canadian Galactic Plane Survey, a Canadian project with international partners, supported by NSERC. D.B.S. acknowledges the NASA Delaware Space Grant Program for its support of this research. J.P.H. acknowledges support from NASA grant NNX08AZ86G to Rutgers University. Facility: VERITAS
Keywords
- BL Lacertae objects: general