Speaker
Carlotta Pittori
(INAF-OAR/ASDC)
Description
The surprising discovery by the AGILE satellite of variable gamma-ray emission above 100 MeV from the Crab Nebula in Sept. 2010 started a new era of investigation of the Crab system, and won to the AGILE PI and the AGILE Team the Bruno Rossi Prize for 2012.
Astronomers have long believed the Crab to be an almost ideal standard candle, a nearly constant source at a level of few percent, from optical to gamma-ray energies. I will summarize recent results on the ground-breaking AGILE discovery of strong and rapid gamma-ray flares from the Crab Nebula over daily timescales, also confirmed by the Fermi NASA Observatory.
AGILE is an Italian Space Agency (ASI) space mission, built and operated in cooperation with INAF, INFN and CIFS, dedicated to the observation of the gamma-ray Universe in the 30 MeV - 50 GeV energy range, with simultaneous X-ray imaging capability, currently in orbit since April 23rd, 2007.
Primary author
Carlotta Pittori
(INAF-OAR/ASDC)
