The flaring blazars of the first 1.5 years of the AGILE mission
Pacciani, L. ; Bulgarelli, A. ; Chen, A.W. ; Colafrancesco, S. ; Giommi, P. ; Salotti, L.
Jan - 2011

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type: Conference Proceedings

Abstract
Abstract We report the AGILE ³ -ray observations and the results of the multiwavelength campaigns on seven flaring blazars detected by the mission: During two multiwavelength campaigns, we observed ³ -ray activity from two Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars of the Virgo region, e.g. 3C 279 and 3C 273 (the latter being the first extragalactic source simultaneously observed with the ³ -ray telescope and the hard X ray imager of the mission). Due to the large FOV of the AGILE/GRID instrument, we achieved an almost continuous coverage of the FSRQ 3C 454.3. The source showed flux above 10 6 photons/cm 2 /s ( E > 100 MeV ) and showed day by day variability during all the AGILE observing periods. In the EGRET era, the source was found in high ³ -ray activity only once. An other blazar, PKS 1510-089 was frequently found in high ³ -ray activity. S5 0716+71, an intermediate BL Lac object, exhibited a very high ³ -ray activity and fast ³ -ray variability during a period of intense optical activity. We observed high ³ -ray activity from W Comae, a BL Lac object, and Mrk 421, a high energy peaked BL Lac object. For this source, a multiwavelength campaign from optical to TeV has been performed.

keywords : Galaxies: active,Galaxies: jets,Galaxies: quasars: general,Radiation mechanisms: non-thermal