Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS
Volume 695, Issue 1, Pages L40-L44Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/695/1/L40
Keywords
galaxies: active; galaxies: individual (Cen A); gamma rays: observations
Categories
Funding
- German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF)
- Max Planck Society
- French Ministry for Research [CNRS-IN2P3]
- Astroparticle Interdisciplinary Programme of the CNRS
- UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
- IPNP of the Charles University
- Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education
- South African Department of Science and Technology
- National Research Foundation
- Science and Technology Facilities Council [PP/D001013/1, PP/E001319/1, ST/G003084/1, ST/F002963/1] Funding Source: researchfish
- STFC [PP/D001013/1, ST/F002963/1, ST/G003084/1, PP/E001319/1] Funding Source: UKRI
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We report the discovery of faint very high energy (VHE; E > 100 GeV) gamma-ray emission from the radio galaxy Centaurus A in observations performed with the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) experiment, an imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope array consisting of four telescopes located in Namibia. Centaurus A has been observed for more than 120 hr. A signal with a statistical significance of 5.0 sigma is detected from the region including the radio core and the inner kpc jets. The integral flux above an energy threshold of similar to 250 GeV is measured to be 0.8% of the flux of the Crab Nebula (apparent luminosity: L(> 250 GeV) approximate to 2.6 x 1039 erg s(-1), adopting a distance of 3.8 Mpc). The spectrum can be described by a power law with a photon index of 2.7 +/- 0.5(stat) +/- 0.2(sys). No significant flux variability is detected in the data set. However, the low flux only allows detection of variability on the timescale of days to flux increments above a factor of similar to 15-20 (3 sigma and 4 sigma, respectively). The discovery of VHE gamma-ray emission from Centaurus A reveals particle acceleration in the source to > TeV energies and, together with M 87, establishes radio galaxies as a class of VHE emitters.
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