Sep 18 – 21, 2018
Cochem (Mosel), Germany
Europe/Berlin timezone
31st Jul Registration | 31th Aug Early Bird | 15th Oct Papers

Contribution List

53 out of 53 displayed
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  1. David Thompson (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)
    9/18/18, 9:20 AM
    Oral

    Since 2008, the Large Area Telescope and the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have been monitoring the entire sky at energies from less than 10 keV to more than 1 TeV. Photon-level data and high-level data products are made publically available in near-real time, and efforts continue to improve the response time. This long-duration, all-sky monitoring has enabled...

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  2. Jean-Philippe Lenain (LPNHE, CNRS/IN2P3)
    9/18/18, 9:50 AM
    Oral

    Blazars exhibit strong variability, and abrupt changes in their flux are observed at high energies down to hour-, or even minute-time scales. Regular monitoring and prompt identication of these variations is key to organise quick follow-up observations. Thanks to its allsky monitoring capabilities, the Fermi-LAT is a very powerful instrument to survey the high energy sky and reveal such...

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  3. Carlo Romoli (MPIK)
    9/18/18, 10:10 AM
    Oral

    The blazar Mrk 501 is a well-known BL-Lac type object, highly variable, on timescales down to a few minutes at TeV energies.
    For the study of its gamma-ray emission, we can now fully exploit the complementarity of Fermi-LAT and ground based telescopes. In particular, at TeV energies, the First G-APD Cherenkov Telescope (FACT) performs unbiased monitoring of a small sample of blazars including...

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  4. Jose Andres Garcia-Gonzalez (IF-UNAM)
    9/18/18, 11:00 AM
    Oral
    MWL

    Many multi-wavelength campaigns have been carried out in the last years to study the correlation between the very high energy (VHE) gamma-ray emission and the X-ray emission in blazars. A linear (even quadratic) correlation has been predicted as consequence of leptonic mechanisms being responsible for the VHE gamma-ray emission. Although the activity in these two energy ranges seems to be...

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  5. Rocco Lico (Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR))
    9/18/18, 11:30 AM
    Oral
    MWL

    Multi-frequency monitorings are an essential tool for investigating the possible connection between the different emission bands, allowing us to discern among the various emission mechanisms producing the observed radiation. In the case of blazars, a strong and significant correlarion was found between radio emission and gamma-rays between 100 MeV and 100 GeV, by using both concurrent and...

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  6. Dr Arti Goyal (Astronomical Observatory of the Jagiellonian University)
    9/18/18, 11:50 AM
    Oral
    MWL

    Variability power spectral densities (PSDs) of blazar light curves, crudly represented as $P(f) = A f^{-\beta}$, where A is the normalization and $\beta$ is the slope, indicate that the variability is generated due to the underlying {\it stochastic} processes (i.e., $\beta \simeq 1-3$, characteristic of flicker/red noise). We present the results of our power spectral analysis on blazar sources...

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  7. Roberto Angioni (Max-Planck Institut für Radioastronomie)
    9/18/18, 12:10 PM
    Oral
    MWL

    We report on the first systematic VLBI and gamma-ray monitoring study of a representative sample of radio galaxies with strong compact radio emission, with the aim of exploring the intrinsic relationship between high-energy emission and pc-scale jet properties in active galactic nuclei (AGN). While a number of studies have firmly established a close relationship between the gamma-ray and radio...

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  8. René Reimann (RWTH Aachen)
    9/18/18, 2:15 PM

    IceCube is the current largest neutrino observatory with an instrumented detection volume of 1 km³ in the ice-sheet below the antarctic South Pole station. With a 4π field of view and an uptime of >99% it is constantly monitoring the full sky to find astrophysical neutrinos. With the detection of an astrophysical neutrino flux in 2013, IceCube opened a new observation window to the...

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  9. Hugo Ayala (Pennsylvania State University)
    9/18/18, 2:45 PM

    The Astrophysical Multimessenger Observatory Network (AMON) was founded to tie the world’s high-energy and multimessenger observatories into a single network, with the purpose to discover multimessenger sources, to exploit these sources for purposes of astrophysics, fundamental physics, and cosmology, and to explore project datasets for evidence of multimessenger source populations. Successes...

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  10. Ludwig Rauch (DESY)
    9/18/18, 3:15 PM

    With the start of a wide-field optical photometric survey at the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), a unique opportunity has begun to scan the northern sky for transients such as Core-Collapse Supernovae, Active Galactic Nuclei and Tidal Disruption Events. The scientific potential is achieved by combining a 47 sq. deg. camera that can perform a 3PI survey each night to a depth of 20.5 mag with...

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  11. Shan Gao (DESY)
    9/18/18, 4:15 PM
    Oral

    On September 22nd 2017, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory reported a muon track from a neutrino with a very good positional accuracy. The alert triggered a number of astronomical follow-up campaigns, and the Fermi gamma-ray telescope found as counterpart an object named TXS0506+056 in a very bright, flaring state; this observation may be the first direct evidence for an extragalactic source of...

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  12. Michael Zacharias (TP IV, Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
    9/18/18, 4:35 PM
    Oral

    The flat spectrum radio quasar CTA 102 (z=1.032) has exhibited a tremendous phase of its existence. Since early 2016 the gamma-ray flux level has been significantly higher than in previous years. It was topped by a 4-month long giant outburst, where peak fluxes were more than 100 times higher than the quiescence level. Similar trends are observable in optical and X-ray energies. We have...

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  13. Andrea Gokus
    9/18/18, 4:55 PM
    Oral

    Recent detections of coincidences between high-energy neutrinos and blazars in flaring states or outbursts have revived interest in hadronic emission components of blazar SEDs. However, calorimetric arguments demonstrate that only the very brightest and most-frequent flaring sources have a realistic probability of being detected by current neutrino telescopes. Among the brightest blazar flares...

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  14. Bidzina Kapanadze (Ilia Sate University, Tbilisi, Georgia)
    9/18/18, 5:15 PM
    Oral

    BL Lacertae objects (BL Lacs) constitute a rare class of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with the extreme observational features attributed to the Doppler-boosted emission from a relativistic jet, closely aligned to our line-of-sight. The spectral energy distribution (SED) of these sources, extending over 17-19 orders of the frequency from radio to the TeV energy range, is of non-thermal...

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  15. Frank Rieger (ZAH Univ. Heidelberg)
    9/19/18, 9:00 AM
    Oral

    I will highlight recent observational results
    concerning the timing characteristics of AGN at gamma-ray
    energies with a focus on indications for log-normality
    and QPOs. The findings will be discussed in the context
    of theoretical approaches to understand the physical
    origin of variability in AGN.

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  16. Nissim Fraija (IA-UNAM)
    9/19/18, 9:30 AM
    Oral

    The broadband spectral energy distribution (SED) of blazars has two well-separated bumps, one of low energy, peaking at soft X-rays and the other of high energy, peaking at hundreds of GeVs. The SED in most of blazars is well understood through the standard one-zone Self-Synchroton Compton (SSC) emission. However, if that is the case, a strong correlation between X-ray and TeV-emission is...

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  17. Stella Boula (University of Athens)
    9/19/18, 9:50 AM
    Oral

    Blazars are a sub-category of radio-loud Active Galactic Nuclei having their jet pointing towards us and are known for their emission covering practically all frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum. These sources, in some cases, exhibit a correlation between gamma-ray and radio emission, especially during flaring episodes. In this work, we construct a one zone leptonic model in order to...

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  18. Dr Nicholas MacDonald (Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy)
    9/19/18, 10:10 AM
    Oral

    I will present a suite of synthetic full Stokes single dish light curves generated from the Turbulent Extreme Multi-Zone (TEMZ) model of blazar emission. These synthetic light curves are created via ray-tracing through the TEMZ jet model and include the effects of optical depth, relativistic aberration, Faraday rotation, Faraday conversion, slow-light interpolation, and beam convolution. We...

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  19. Dr Abigail Stevens (Michigan State U.)
    9/19/18, 11:00 AM
    Oral

    The light curves of black hole X-ray binaries show variability on timescales from milliseconds to months. The variability is from X-ray-bright matter in the inner region of curved spacetime surrounding the black hole. We use Fourier techniques to identify timing signals such as quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) and intrinsic broadband/band-limited noise. These signals are not just due to...

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  20. Aditi Agarwal (Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bangalore, India)
    9/19/18, 11:30 AM
    Oral + Poster

    To provide a detailed understanding of blazar and its environment, we study variability over diverse timescales using various statistical methods. As optical flux variations in blazars are often followed by spectral changes, thus we examine their colour – magnitude relationship on diverse timescales which helps us to understand the origin of variability. Presence or absence of correlation...

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  21. Prof. Stefan Wagner (LSW Heidelberg)
    9/19/18, 11:50 AM
    Oral

    Most gamma-ray emitting AGN are variable and multiwavelength temporal studies provide insights into acceleration and radiation mechanisms, source size, radiative re-processing and source structure.
    The gamma-ray band is very wide and is explored with very different techniques. In different energy
    bands very different biases affect temporal studies. The biases have significant implication for...

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  22. Yoshinta Setyawati (AEI Hannover)
    9/19/18, 2:15 PM

    Four hundred years ago Galileo revolutionised the way we see the universe through his telescope. Since then fascinating yet bizarre astrophysical phenomena reveal our capricious universe. Using electromagnetic observations we have been discovering exciting events at different wavelengths. Surprisingly, the universe is eager to send us information through different kinds of waves which probe...

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  23. Israel Martinez-Castellanos (University of Maryland)
    9/19/18, 2:45 PM

    On August 17th, 2017 the LIGO and Virgo detectors observed gravitational waves consistent with a binary neutron star (BNS) coalescence, with spatial and temporal coincidence with a gamma-ray burst (GRB) detected by the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor. Subsequent emission in the optical, ultraviolet, infrared, X-ray and radio bands was also observed. This was a milestone in multi-messenger...

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  24. Peter Veres
    9/19/18, 3:05 PM

    The Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) routinely observes the unocculted sky for transient astrophysical phenomena in gamma-rays. On August 17th, 2017 Fermi-GBM detected GRB 170817A, the first unambiguous electromagnetic counterpart to a gravitational wave event. Observationally, GRB 170817A was an ordinary short GRB. Together with the distance information from the gravitational wave...

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  25. 9/19/18, 3:25 PM
  26. Jose Andres Garcia-Gonzalez (IF-UNAM)
    9/19/18, 4:15 PM
    Oral

    The First G-APD Cherenkov Telescope (FACT) has been monitoring blazars at TeV energies for more than six years. Because of the automatic operations and the usage of robust solid state photosensors (SiPM, aka G-APDs), it has been possible to collect a large and unbiased data sample of more than 11,000 hours. One of the closest and brightest blazars in the gamma-ray/X-ray sky, Mrk 421, is...

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  27. Amit Shukla (Institut für Theoretische Physik und Astrophysik, Universität Würzburg)
    9/19/18, 4:35 PM
    Oral

    The locations of emission of gamma-ray radiation in active galactic nuclei jet are highly debated and it range from light-hours to a few light-year in quasar jets. The situation is more complex in the case of flat spectrum radio quasars, where the gamma-rays photons above 10 GeV may interact with the UV radiation from broad line region and get absorbed. I will be talking about the recent...

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  28. Michael Zacharias (TP IV, Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
    9/19/18, 4:55 PM
    Oral + Poster

    PKS 1510-089 is one of only a handful of flat spectrum radio quasars detected in very high energy (VHE, E > 100 GeV) gamma rays. Since the first detection in 2009, the source has been monitored VHE. Here, we present one special event that is a direct result of the monitoring effort. In May 2016, a major VHE gamma-ray flare was observed from PKS 1510-089 by the H.E.S.S. and MAGIC telescopes....

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  29. Daniela Dorner (Universität Würzburg)
    9/19/18, 5:15 PM
    Oral

    Blazars are known to show variability on time scales from minutes to
    years. This complicates the measurement of their ground state. For
    this, long-term monitoring is important to increase the chance to study
    the source in an all-time low state.

    The First G-APD Cherenkov Telescope (FACT) is monitoring bright TeV
    blazars since more than six years and has collected between 1500 and
    3000 hours of...

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  30. Philipp Arras
    9/20/18, 9:15 AM
    Oral + Poster

    Working with multi-messenger data comes with a variety of challenges. Ideally, one would like to take the prior information into account that the scientific object looks similar in neighbouring frequency channels. Moreover, data from radio telescopes has different statistical properties compared to data generated by gamma-ray telescopes: the former can be assumed to have Gaussian noise and the...

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  31. Bernd Schleicher (Universität Würzburg)
    9/20/18, 9:45 AM
    Oral

    Active Galactic Nuclei emit radiation over the whole electromagnetic spectrum up to TeV energies. Blazars are one subtype with their jets pointing towards the observer. One of their typical features is extreme variability on timescales from minutes to years.
    The fractional variability is an often used parameter for investigating the degree of variability of a light curve. By using public data...

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  32. Dr Sunil Chandra (North-West University, Potchefstroom )
    9/20/18, 10:05 AM
    Oral

    The AstroSat, space-based Indian multi-wavelength observatory, provides an unique platform to enable the access of a very broad energy band (E~ 0.012 - 120.0 keV). It has also displayed the capability of observing hard X-ray polarization (e.g. 100-380 keV for Crab) for bright objects like bright GRBs, Crab, Cyg-1 etc. However, the timing capability of AstroSat has been displayed for a number...

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  33. Markus Boettcher (North-West University)
    9/20/18, 11:00 AM
    Oral

    This talks reviews general theoretical aspects of modeling the broadband
    spectral variability of blazars. Both time-dependent leptonic and lepto-
    hadronic models will be discussed. Recent applications to the modeling of
    coordinated and unccoordinated (orphan flares) multi-wavelength variability
    of several prominent Fermi-LAT blazars will be discussed.

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  34. Paul Morris (University of Oxford)
    9/20/18, 11:30 AM
    Oral + Poster

    Flaring in blazar jets has been found to occur at TeV energies on rapid timescales as short as minutes, implying the emission originates from a very compact region within the jet. Whilst the physical origin powering such flares is yet to be established, recent particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations have indicated that magnetic reconnection can plausibly produce plasmoids small enough to...

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  35. Hannes Thiersen (North-West University)
    9/20/18, 11:50 AM
    Oral + Poster

    Most research in blazar variability focuses on individual flares to explain acceleration
    and radiation mechanisms and improve on current models. These short-time events (minutes,
    hours or days) might not be representative of the underlying mechanisms causing small-
    amplitude variability and/or continuous emission present most of the time. We therefore
    investigate long-term (month to years)...

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  36. Dr Mohamad Shalaby
    9/20/18, 12:10 PM
    Oral

    The TeV-bright blazars induce cosmological beam-plasma instabilities through the emission of gamma rays: The gamma rays annihilate on the infrared-ultraviolet extra-galactic background light (EBL) producing electron/positron pair-beams which drive the growth of linearly unstable beam-plasma waves during their propagation through the ionized intergalactic medium (IGM). This results in...

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  37. David Paneque (Max Planck Institute for Physics)
    9/20/18, 2:15 PM
    Oral
    MWL

    Because of their brightness and proximity (z=0.03), Mrk421 and Mrk501 are among the very-high-energy gamma-ray objects that can be studied with the greatest level of detail. This makes them excellent astrophysical high-energy physics laboratories to study the nature of blazars. Since 2009, there has been an unprecedentedly long and dense monitoring of the radio to very-high-energy gamma-ray...

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  38. Dr Víctor Manuel Patiño-Álvarez (Max Planck Institut für Radioastronomie)
    9/20/18, 2:45 PM
    Oral
    MWL

    In this contribution, I will present the results of a recently published paper on the Flat Spectrum Radio Quasar 3C 279. We use light curves that cover a time-frame of six years, at different wavelengths: Gamma-rays, X-rays, UV 3000 Å continuum, optical V band, Near-Infrared (NIR) JHK bands, 1mm, as well as optical spectropolarimetry.

    By applying cross-correlation analysis, We find that the...

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  39. Pankaj Kushwaha (Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil)
    9/20/18, 3:05 PM
    Oral
    MWL

    The BL Lac object OJ 287 exhibits a regular ~12 years quasi-periodic outburst in optical band. The latest of this outburst occurred in December 2015 and since then till July 2017, it has exhibited intense multi-wavelength (MW) activity with many new features never seen before. The overall MW activity can be divided into two phases: November 2015 – May 2016, exhibiting strong variability from...

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  40. Eduardo Ros (MPI für Radioastronomie & Univ. de València)
    9/20/18, 4:15 PM
    Oral

    Active galactic nuclei (AGN) present rapid variability across the electromagnetic spectrum. In most cases, this can be explained with relativistic boosting along the line of sight. A very valuable approach to probe the nature of these objects is to study their radio morphology at the highest resolution available at present, provided by very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI). While...

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  41. Sarah Wagner
    9/20/18, 4:45 PM
    Oral + Poster

    In September 2012, the blazar Mrk421 showed a remarkable and distinct radio flare most prominent at cm wavelengths, following a similar flare at gamma-ray energies that occured about 40 days earlier. The radio flaring bahavior indicates the injection of fresh plasma into the jet, which may lead to the formation of a new jet component on parsec scales. This can be verified in analysis of the...

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  42. Carolina Casadio (Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie)
    9/20/18, 5:05 PM
    Oral

    In order to investigate the high energy emission and jet formation in blazars, we study a sample of gamma-ray bright AGN in a combined 7mm / 3mm Vlbi monitoring program. Here we present total and linearly polarized  GMVA images of a sample of blazars from the VLBA-BU-BLAZAR program, obtained from May 2016 to March 2017.  The lower opacity at 3 mm and high angular resolution, of the order of 50...

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  43. Ioannis Liodakis (KIPAC, Stanford University)
    9/20/18, 5:25 PM
    Oral

    Relativistic effects dominate the emission of blazar jets complicating our understanding of their intrinsic properties. Although many methods have been proposed to account for them, the variability Doppler factor method has been shown to describe the blazar populations best. We use a Bayesian hierarchical code called Magnetron to model the light curves of 973 sources observed by the Owens...

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  44. Dr Maria Magdalena Gonzalez (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico)
    9/21/18, 9:00 AM
    Oral

    The High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) observatory is a wide field-of-view instrument under operations since March 2015 and located in the state of Puebla, México. HAWC observes two thirds of the sky daily at energies between 0.1 and 100 TeV with a duty cycle greater than 95%. This capability allows us to monitor unbiasedly known sources as the Mrk 421 blazar, to search blindly for transient...

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  45. Alicja Wierzcholska
    9/21/18, 9:30 AM
    Oral

    Despite several years of observation, the nature of blazars' variability remains still enigmatic.
    Thus, simultaneous multi-wavelength monitoring, including observations in the TeV regime is an important tool for understanding the nature of these objects.
    In this talk I will present results of H.E.S.S. monitoring of two famous blazars: BL Lacertae type one PKS 2155-304 and flat spectrum radio...

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  46. Mr Axel Arbet-Engels
    9/21/18, 9:50 AM
    Oral

    The First G-APD Cherenkov Telescope (FACT) is an imaging air Cherenkov
    telescope observing in the very high energy gamma-ray regime since
    October 2011. Thanks to its silicon-based photosensors and robotic
    operation, it has a stable performance and a maximized duty cycle.
    Therefore, it is ideally suited for long-term monitoring. Focussing on
    regular observations of a small selection of bright...

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  47. Dr Werner Collmar (Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik)
    9/21/18, 10:10 AM
    Oral

    The COMPTEL experiment aboard the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (CGRO) explored
    the MeV sky (0.75 - 30 MeV) for more than 9 years between April 1991 and June 2000,
    providing many discoveries. Now, more than 18 years after the deorbit of CGRO, the
    COMPTEL data are still the forefront of our knowledge on the non-thermal soft gamma-ray
    sky (1 - 30 MeV), because no successor is yet operating.

    The...

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  48. Vasiliki Pavlidou (University of Crete)
    9/21/18, 11:00 AM
    Oral

    After 5 years of polarimetric monitoring of blazars, the RoboPol project has uncovered several key characteristics of polarimetric rotations in the optical for these most variable sources. The most important of these is that polarization properties of the synchrotron emission in the optical appear to be directly linked with gamma-ray activity. I will discuss the evidence for this connection,...

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  49. Prof. Kosmas Gazeas (University of Athens, Greece)
    9/21/18, 11:30 AM
    Oral + Poster

    The prototype blazar BL Lac is monitored in the frame of the Blazar Optical Sky Survey (BOSS) Project at the University of Athens Observatory (UOAO), during the period of 2014-2018. BL Lac is continuously observed on a daily basis, in order to achieve dense temporal coverage in optical wavelengths, and study the short time-scale flux variability. Several long-runs have been conducted, where...

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  50. Felix Jankowsky (LSW Heidelberg)
    9/21/18, 11:50 AM
    Oral

    ATOM is an optical telescope located at the H.E.S.S. site in Namibia. It monitors optical flux of roughly 300 known gamma-ray emitters. In the beginning of 2018, a new instrument has been installed with the aim of enhancing the capabilities of ATOM – including measuring sub-second variability and polarisation. I will give a short overview of the new instrument's design and present first results.

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  51. Dr Margo Aller (University of Michigan, USA)
    Oral

    Magnetic field strength and geometry are fundamental properties which control the formation and evolution of relativistic jets, and their observed emission via the field's impact on particle acceleration. At centimeter-band, where the emission is well-known to be produced by the synchrotron process, magnetic field properties can be constrained using a wealth of data from both single-dish...

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  52. Maria Magdalena Gonzalez (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico)
    Poster

    Blazars are extremely variable objects emitting radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum and showing variability on time scales from minutes to years. Simultaneous multi-wavelength observations are crucial for understanding the emission mechanisms. From radio via optical, X-ray to gamma rays, a variety of instruments, as Fermi and OVRO, are already monitoring blazars. At TeV energies,...

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  53. Dr Lenka Tomankova (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
    Oral + Poster

    The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the next-generation ground-based gamma-ray observatory, currently in the prototyping and testing phase. CTA will consist of two arrays of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes, one in the Northern and one in the Southern hemisphere, reaching a sensitivity roughly five to ten times higher than existing instruments and covering an energy range from 20...

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