KSP: Extragalactic Survey
Abstract
This Key Science Project (KSP) consists of a blind survey of 25% of the total sky. The survey is aimed primarily at extragalactic science with the main objective to construct an unbiased VHE extragalactic source catalogue with an integral sensitivity limit of ∼6mCrab above 125 GeV. At the moment there are about 60 extragalactic sources seen with the imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs) H.E.S.S., MAGIC, and VERITAS, most of these being BL Lacertae (BL Lac) objects. In addition there are five radio galaxies, six flat spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) and two starburst galaxies (NGC 253 and M82). The sample is, however, strongly biased since most of observations were motivated by high averaged flux at lower frequencies in optical, X-ray or gamma-ray wavebands. Moreover, about half of the detections have been made when alerted that the sources were in a flaring state. A second objective of this KSP is to provide a high resolution map of the extragalactic sky at gamma-ray energies between 50GeV and 10TeV. A third objective is to search for unexpected and serendipitous VHE phenomena over a large portion of the sky. The area covered by the Extragalactic Survey will connect to the Galactic Plane Survey (GPS) so that no Galactic latitude is l un-surveyed…
- Publication:
-
Science with the Cherenkov Telescope Array
- Pub Date:
- 2019
- DOI:
- 10.1142/9789813270091_0008
- Bibcode:
- 2019scta.book..143M