Fermi LAT weekly reports N.78

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Covered period: 2009.Nov.30 – 2009.Dec.6 (UT)

LAT Mission week: 78.57 – 79.57

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A very interesting week for LAT blazars with the detection of a giant GeV flare from the FSRQ 3C 454.3.

• 3C 454.3 (LAT Atel #2328) : continued to the previous week's flare and reached a very high state with an average daily gamma-ray flux of 22 ± 1, peaking at 26 ± 3 in the 6 hour period between 12 and 18 UT of Dec. 2nd. This flare is the highest ever recorded in this energy range and represents more than twice the flux of the Vela pulsar, the brightest persistent source in the gamma-ray sky.
  See the NASA press release http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/brightest-blazar.html
  From Dec. 2nd the flux slightly decreased almost continuously but ended the week on Dec. 6 with daily flux = 14 ± 1.



• GB6 B1310+4844 (GB1 1310+487) (LAT ATels #2306, #2316) : remained in high state until Dec. 2nd with flux = 0.6 +/- 0.2 and index = 2.0 +/- 0.2 and was not detected after this day.



• 4C +14.23 began less active than last week with flux = 1.0 +/- 0.4 on Nov. 30 but the flux then increased to 1.9 +/- 0.5 on Dec. 1St . The source finished the week with flux = 1.4 +/- 0.4 on Dec. 4.



• PKS 1222+21 was detected on Dec 1st and Dec. 4 at a similar level to last week reaching flux = 0.8 +/- 0.2.



• 3C 273 appeared once during the week on Dec. 2nd with daily flux = 1.8 +/- 0.4.



• PKS 0426-38 appeared on Nov. 30 with flux = 0.3 +/- 0.1 and reached flux = 0.8 +/- 0.2 on Dec. 1st.



• 4C +38.41 was detected on Dec. 4 with flux = 0.7 +/- 0.2.



• PKS 0537-441 appeared at the end of the week, on Dec. 5, with flux = 0.7 +/- 0.3.




Fluxes are in the unit of photons/cm²/s above 100 MeV. All errors are statistical only.





Note. All the fluxes reported above are from the ASP analysis and should be considered preliminary and should not be used for publication, however they are indicative of the flux range and the current status of a source. Source association is done on the basis of source location, considering spatial coincidence only, and it is not indicative of an identification.
- Please acknowledge the LAT team if you use information from this report.


For questions and comments please contact:

- S. Ciprini (escande[at]cenbg.in2p3.fr) for generic information related to this week

- Contact persons on this page for individual sources cited above.






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