Multi-wavelength identification of high-energy sources
| dc.creator | Mignani, R. P. | |
| dc.date | 2009-02-03 | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-07-07T12:37:33Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2026-07-07T12:37:33Z | |
| dc.description | The nature of most of the ~300 high-energy gamma-ray sources discovered by the EGRET instrument aboard the Gamma-ray Observatory (GRO) between 1991 and 1999 is one of the greatest enigmas in high-energy astrophysics. While about half of the extragalactic sources have been optically identified with Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), only a meagre 10% of the galactic sources have a reliable identification. This low success rate has mainly to be ascribed to the local crowding of potential optical counterparts and to the large gamma-ray error boxes (of the order of one degree in radius) which prevented a straightforward optical identification. Indeed, a multi-wavelength identification strategy, based on a systematic coverage of the gamma-ray error boxes, has been the only do-able approach. The situation is now greatly improving thanks to the observations performed by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope which, thanks to the LAT instrument, provides a factor of 50 improvement in sensitivity and a factor of 10 improvement in positional accuracy. However, while the smaller error boxes will make the multi-wavelength follow-ups easier, the larger sensitivity will enormously increase the number of detected gamma-ray sources, requiring an even larger effort in the multi-wavelength follow-ups. This effort can not be obviously sustained by targeted observations only and it would greatly benefit from multi-wavelength data and advanced data products available world wide through the science data centres and interfaced by the Virtual Observatory (VO) tools. In this contribution, I outline the science case, the multi-wavelength observation synergies, and the requirements for both the the science data centres and the VO. | |
| dc.description | 4 pages, to be published in the Proceedings of the Conference "Multiwavelength Astronomy and the Virtual Observatory", held at ESAC-Madrid, December 1-3 2008 | |
| dc.identifier | https://arxiv.org/abs/0902.0634 | |
| dc.identifier | http://arxiv.org/abs/0902.0634 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/218479 | |
| dc.subject | High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena | |
| dc.title | Multi-wavelength identification of high-energy sources | |
| dc.type | text |