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Optical spectroscopic observations of gamma-ray blazar candidates. X. Results from the 2018–2019 SOAR and OAN-SPM observations of blazar candidates of uncertain type

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Abstract

The fourth Fermi Large Area Telescope Source Catalog (4FGL) lists over 5000 \(\gamma\)-ray sources with statistical significance above \(4\sigma\). About 23% of the sources listed in this catalog are unidentified/unassociated \(\gamma\)-ray sources while ∼26% of the sources are classified as blazar candidates of uncertain type (BCUs), lacking optical spectroscopic information. To probe the blazar nature of candidate counterparts of UGSs and BCUs, we started our optical spectroscopic follow up campaign in 2012, which up to date account for more than 350 observed sources. In this paper, the tenth of our campaign, we report on the spectroscopic observations of 37 sources, mostly BCUs, whose observations were carried out predominantly at the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional San Pedro Mártir and the Southern Astrophysical Research Observatory between August 2018 and September 2019. We confirm the BL Lac nature of 27 sources and the flat spectrum radio quasar nature of three sources. The remaining ones are classified as six BL Lacs galaxy-dominated and one normal galaxy. We were also able to measure the redshifts for 20 sources, including 10 BL Lacs. As in previous analyses, the largest fraction of BCUs revealed to be BL Lac objects.

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Notes

  1. https://fermi.gsfc.nasa.gov/ssc/data/access/lat/fl8y/.

  2. http://archive.eso.org/dss/dss.

  3. http://www.astropy.org.

  4. http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/topcat/.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by FAPESP (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo) under grants 2016/25484-9 and 2018/24801-6 (R.M.). R.A.A-A. and H.P. acknowledge support from the CONACyT program for Ph.D. studies. The work of F.M. and A.P. is partially supported by the “Departments of Excellence 2018–2022” Grant awarded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) (L. 232/2016) and made use of resources provided by the Compagnia di San Paolo for the grant awarded on the BLENV project (S1618_L1_MASF_01) and by the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research for the grant MASF_FFABR_17_01. F.M. also acknowledges financial contribution from the agreement ASI-INAF n.2017-14-H.0 while A.P. the financial support from the Consorzio Interuniversitario per la Fisica Spaziale (CIFS) under the agreement related to the grant MASF_ CONTR_FIN_18_02. F.R. acknowledges support from FONDECYT Postdoctorado 3180506 and CONICYT project Basal AFB-170002. C.C.C. at NRL was supported by the Chief of Naval Research.

This research made use of Astropy,Footnote 3 a community-developed core Python package for Astronomy (Astropy Collaboration 2013, 2018), ccdproc, an Astropy package for image reduction (Craig et al. 2015), and TOPCATFootnote 4 (Taylor 2005) for the preparation and manipulation of the tabular data.

This project makes use of data products from the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) telescope, which is a joint project of the Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia, Inovações e Comunicações (MCTIC) da República Federativa do Brasil, the U.S. National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), and Michigan State University (MSU).

This project makes use of spectroscopic observations acquired at the 2.1 m telescope of the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional San Pedro Mártir (OAN-SPM), Baja California, México. We also thank the staff at the Observatorio Astrofísico Guillermo Haro (OAGH) for all their help during the observation runs.

This publication makes use of data products from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, which is a joint project of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Astronomia, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, SP, 05508-090, Brazil

    R. de Menezes

  2. Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Torino, via Pietro Giuria 1, I-10125, Torino, Italy

    R. de Menezes, E. J. Marchesini, H. A. Peña-Herazo & F. Massaro

  3. Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica, Apartado Postal 51-216, 72000, Puebla, Mexico

    R. A. Amaya-Almazán, H. A. Peña-Herazo & V. Chavushyan

  4. Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Torino, I-10125, Torino, Italy

    E. J. Marchesini, H. A. Peña-Herazo, F. Massaro & A. Paggi

  5. INAF-Osservatorio Astrofisico di Torino, via Osservatorio 20, 10025, Pino Torinese, Italy

    H. A. Peña-Herazo, F. Massaro & A. Paggi

  6. Consorzio Interuniversitario per la Fisica Spaziale (CIFS), via Pietro Giuria 1, I-10125, Torino, Italy

    F. Massaro

  7. Facultad de Ciencias Astronómicas y Geofísicas, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, La Plata, Argentina

    E. J. Marchesini

  8. Instituto de Astrofísica de La Plata, CONICET-UNLP, CCT La Plata, La Plata, Argentina

    E. J. Marchesini

  9. INAF – Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio, via Gobetti 93/3, I-40129, Bologna, Italy

    E. J. Marchesini & N. Masetti

  10. INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, Via Emilio Bianchi 46, I-23807, Merate, Italy

    M. Landoni

  11. Departamento de Ciencias Físicas, Universidad Andrés Bello, Fernández Concha 700, Las Condes, Santiago, Chile

    N. Masetti

  12. Instituto de Astrofísica and Centro de Astroingeniería, Facultad de Física, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Casilla 306, Santiago 22, Chile

    F. Ricci

  13. Center for Astrophysics ∣ Harvard & Smithsonian, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

    R. D’Abrusco & Howard A. Smith

  14. Naval Research Laboratory, Space Science Division, Code 7650, Washington, DC, 20375, USA

    C. C. Cheung

  15. Dipartimento di Matematica e Fisica, Università degli Studi Roma Tre, Via della Vasca Navale 84, I-00146, Roma, Italy

    F. La Franca

  16. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Purdue University, 525 Northwestern Avenue, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, USA

    D. Milisavljevic

  17. Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Perugia, 06123, Perugia, Italy

    G. Tosti

  18. Instituto de Astronomía, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Apdo. Postal 877, Ensenada, 22800, Baja California, Mexico

    E. Jiménez-Bailón

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  1. R. de Menezes
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  2. R. A. Amaya-Almazán
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  3. E. J. Marchesini
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  4. H. A. Peña-Herazo
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  5. F. Massaro
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  6. V. Chavushyan
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  7. A. Paggi
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  8. M. Landoni
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  9. N. Masetti
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  10. F. Ricci
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  11. R. D’Abrusco
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  12. F. La Franca
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  13. Howard A. Smith
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  14. D. Milisavljevic
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  15. G. Tosti
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  16. E. Jiménez-Bailón
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  17. C. C. Cheung
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Correspondence to R. de Menezes.

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Appendix: Optical spectra and finding charts

Appendix: Optical spectra and finding charts

Here we present all the spectra collected together with their respective finding charts extracted from ESO Online Digitized Sky Survey (Fig. 2).

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de Menezes, R., Amaya-Almazán, R.A., Marchesini, E.J. et al. Optical spectroscopic observations of gamma-ray blazar candidates. X. Results from the 2018–2019 SOAR and OAN-SPM observations of blazar candidates of uncertain type. Astrophys Space Sci 365, 12 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-020-3727-5

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