Document Type

Article

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Disciplines

Astrophysics and Astronomy | Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Publication Details

The Astrophysical Journal .

© 2014. The American Astronomical Society

Abstract

We present very high energy (VHE) imaging of MGRO J2019+37 obtained with the VERITAS observatory. The bright extended (~2°) unidentified Milagro source is located toward the rich star formation region Cygnus-X. MGRO J2019+37 is resolved into two VERITAS sources. The faint, point-like source VER J2016+371 overlaps CTB 87, a filled-center remnant (SNR) with no evidence of a supernova remnant shell at the present time. Its spectrum is well fit in the 0.65-10 TeV energy range by a power-law model with photon index 2.3 ± 0.4. VER J2019+378 is a bright extended (~1°) source that likely accounts for the bulk of the Milagro emission and is notably coincident with PSR J2021+3651 and the star formation region Sh 2–104. Its spectrum in the range 1-30 TeV is well fit with a power-law model of photon index 1.75 ± 0.3, among the hardest values measured in the VHE band, comparable to that observed near Vela-X. We explore the unusual spectrum and morphology in the radio and X-ray bands to constrain possible emission mechanisms for this source.

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