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Discovery of Very High Energy Gamma-Ray Emission From Gravitationally Lensed Blazar S3 0218+357 with the MAGIC Telescopes

The MAGIC collaboration reports the discovery of very high energy (VHE ; E>100 GeV) gamma-ray emission from S3 0218+357 (RA=02h21m05.5s, DEC=+35d56m14s, J2000.0). The object was observed with the MAGIC telescopes for a total of 3.5 hours from 2014/07/23 to 2014/07/26. The preliminary analysis of these data resulted in the detection of S3 0218+357 with a statistical significance of more than 5 standard deviations. From the preliminary analysis, we estimate the VHE flux of this detection to be about 15% of the flux from the Crab Nebula in the energy range 100-200 GeV. S3 0218+357 is a gravitationally lensed blazar located at the redshift of 0.944+/-0.002 (Cohen et al., 2003, ApJ, 583, 67). Fermi-LAT observations during the flaring state of S3 0218+357 in 2012 revealed a series of flares with their counterparts after 11.46+/-0.16 days delay, interpreted as due to the gravitational lensing effect (Cheung et al. 2014, ApJ, 782, L14). On 2014 July 13 and 14 Fermi-LAT detected another flaring episode (ATel #6316). Due to the full-moon time, the MAGIC telescopes were not operational and could not observe S3 0218+357 after the original alert. However, observations scheduled at the expected time of arrival of the gravitationally lensed component led to the first significant detection of a gravitationally lensed blazar and the most distant source detected at VHE with Cherenkov telescopes to date. MAGIC observations on S3 0218+357 will continue during the next days and multiwavelength observations are encouraged. The MAGIC contact persons for these observations are R. Mirzoyan (Razmik.Mirzoyan@mpp.mpg.de) and J. Sitarek (jsitarek@ifae.es). MAGIC is a system of two 17m-diameter Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes located at the Canary island of La Palma, Spain, and designed to perform gamma-ray astrophysics in the energy range from 50 GeV to greater than 50 TeV.

Gamma Ray ; >GeV ; TeV ; VHE ; UHE ; AGN ; Blazar ; Cosmic Rays ; Microlensing Event

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