Abstract

Contributed Talk - Splinter Relativistic

Friday, 25 September 2020, 09:40   (virtual room J)

The FACT TeV monitoring program

Axel Arbet-Engels, for the FACT Collaboration
ETH Zürich

The First G-APD Cherenkov Telescope (FACT) is monitoring bright TeV blazars at very-high-energies (VHE; E>100 GeV). Despite being among the best-studied objects, the origin of their VHE emission mechanisms and their extreme variability remain a mystery. Thanks to the robotic operations and the stable performance of its SiPM camera, FACT minimises the observational gaps and maximises the duty cycle. Exploiting the excellent temporal coverage of FACT, we are performing unprecedented long-term periodicity and variability studies, essential to unravel the underlying physics. In this talk, results from the most recent observing campaigns including data from a large number of multi-wavelength observatories will be presented. A special focus will be given on the exceptional outburst of the blazar 1ES2344+514 detected by FACT during 2016.