Galactic Sources Science With Agile: The Case Of The Carina Region

Abstract

During its first 2 years of operation, the gamma-ray AGILE satellite accumulated an extensive dataset for the Galactic plane. The data have been monitored for transient sources and several gamma-ray sources were detected. Their variability and possible association were studied. In this talk we will focus on the results of extensive observations of the Carina Region during the time period 2007 July - 2009 January, for a total livetime of ~130 days. The region is extremely complex, hosting massive star formation, with the remarkable colliding wind binary Eta Carinae, massive star clusters and HII regions (e.g. NGC 3324, RCW49, Westerlund II) and a giant molecular cloud extending over 150 pc (between l=284.7 and l=289). The Carina Nebula itself is the largest and IR highest surface brightness nebula of the Southern emisphere. We monitored several gamma ray sources in the Carina Region. In particular we detect a gamma ray source (1AGL J1043-5931) consistent with the position of Eta Carinae and report a remarkable 2-days gamma-ray flaring episode from this source on 2008 Oct 11-13. If 1AGL J1043-5931 is associated with the Eta Car system, our data provides the long sought first detection above 100 MeV of a colliding wind binary.

arXiv comment5 pages, 5 figures, proceedings of RICAP 2009

References in corpus (14)

• Fermi Large Area Telescope Bright Gamma-ray Source List
• The AGILE Mission
• SuperAGILE: the hard X-ray Imager for the AGILE space mission
• Non-thermal high-energy emission from colliding winds of massive stars
• The periodicity of the eta Carinae events
• First AGILE Catalog of High Confidence Gamma-Ray Sources
• 3D modelling of the colliding winds in Eta Carinae - evidence for radiative inhibition
• Gamma-ray emission from Wolf-Rayet binaries
• Chemical evolution of galaxies. I. A composition-dependent SPH model for chemical evolution and cooling
• A 3D dynamical model of the colliding winds in binary systems
• A multispectral view of the periodic events in eta Carinae
• The first orbital solution for the massive colliding-wind binary HD93162 (=WR25)
• Chandra and XMM-Newton Observations of the Vela-like Pulsar B1046-58
• The high energy X-ray tail of Eta Car revealed by BeppoSAX

Cited by in corpus (1)

• The Second AGILE Catalog of Gamma-Ray Sources