Bonn 2010 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 95: Gammaastronomie IV

T 95.6: Vortrag

Donnerstag, 18. März 2010, 18:00–18:15, JUR F

Detection of gamma rays from the starburst galaxy NGC 253 with H.E.S.S. — •Wilfried Domainko¹, Dalobor Nedbal², Mathieu de Naurois³, Stefan Ohm¹, Heinrich J. Voelk¹, Yvonne Becherini⁴, and Arache Djannati-Atai⁴ — ¹Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg, Germany — ²Charles University, Prag, Czech Republic — ³Laboratoire de Physique Nucléaire et de Hautes Energies, Universités Paris VI & VII, France — ⁴APC, CNRS, Universite Paris, France

The galaxy NGC 253, the closest starburst galaxy in the southern hemisphere, exhibits a highly increased supernova rate in a small region around its center. Remnants of these stellar explosions are believed to be responsible for acceleration of cosmic rays up to the knee of the cosmic ray spectrum. In this talk the detection of gamma rays - tracers of such cosmic rays - from the starburst galaxy NGC 253 with H.E.S.S. is reported. The source is observed above an energy threshold of 220 GeV at a level of 0.3% of the flux of the Crab nebula thus being the faintest very-high-energy gamma-ray emitter detected so far. This result implies that the cosmic ray density in the central region of NGC 253 is about three orders of magnitude larger than in our own galaxy.