Back to Main Page
Observation Date (UT) Observation Lat

Canonical Name:1ES 1215+303
TeVCat Name:TeV J1217+301
Other Names:ON 325, B2 1215+30, VER J1217+301
Source Type:HBL
R.A.:12 17 48.5 (hh mm ss)
Dec.:+30 06 06 (dd mm ss)
Gal Long: 189.01 (deg)
Gal Lat: 82.05 (deg)
Distance: z=0.131
Flux:0.035 (Crab Units)
Energy Threshold:250 GeV
Spectral Index:
Extended:No
Discovery Date:2011-01
Discovered By: MAGIC
TeVCat SubCat:Default Catalog

Source Notes:

Source position and its uncertainty:

TeV source position added on 131028; prior to that, the position from NED was used
From VERITAS Collaboration (2013):
- R.A. (J2000): 12h 17m 48.5s +/- 1.7s (stat)
- Dec. (J2000): +30d 06' 06" +/- 25"
- Systematic uncertainty: 50"

Distance:

171017: The redshift was updated from z=0.13 to z=0.131

From Piano et al. 2017:
- "we secured a high quality optical spectrum (SNR approx. 300) in
which we detect two emission lines: [OII] 3727 Angstroms,
[OIII] 5007 Angstroms at z = 0.131 (see also Table 5) confirming
the low redshift previously reported."
Note: in the abstract the redshift is listed as z=0.129; in Table 4
the emission lines are listed as lying at redshift of z=0.129
- White et al. (2000) give z=0.237
- Akiyama et al. (2003) give z=0.130

Triggered observations:

- From ATel 3100: "The MAGIC observations were triggered by
an optical high-state of the source, reported by the Tuorla blazar
monitoring program".

Spectral Properties:

From VERITAS Collaboration (2013):
- Spectral index: 3.6 +/- 0.4(stat) +/- 0.3(syst)

From Aleksic et al. (2012):
- Spectral index: 2.96 +/- 0.14(stat) +/- 0.15(syst)

From Prokoph et al. (2012):
- Spectral index: 3.6 +/- 0.5

Flux :

From VERITAS Collaboration (2013):
- during the 2011 season:
- 3.4% of the Crab Nebula flux
- "no evidence for deviation from a steady flux" was found. "No
significant flux variations within any monthly bin were detected
either."
- data available outside the 2011 season (2008/9 and 2012):
- an upper limit was placed on the TeV flux during 2008/9
- during 2012 a flux at the leve of 1.2% of the Crab Nebula flux was
detected
- "The hypothesis of a constant flux between the three seasons is
excluded at the level of 4.5 sigma."

From Prokoph et al. (2012):
- a flux at the level of about 3% of that of the Crab is reported above 200 GeV

From Aleksic et al. (2012):
- the flux corresponds to about 3.5% of the Crab Nebula flux

From Benbow et al. (2011):
- a flux at the level of 1% that of the Crab is reported

From Mariotti (2011):
- a flux at the level of (2.0 +/- 1.0)% that of the Crab is reported

Classification:

Initially, this source was classified as an LBL in TeVCat. It has been
updated (121113) to a HBL based on its classification in
the Fermi 2nd AGN Catalog (Ackermann et al. 2012)

From Valverde et al. (2020):
- "In many ways, 1ES 1215+303 shows typical features of a classical
HBL source: it has an FR I radio jet (Giroletti et al. 2006) at the
kpc scale, with multiple stationary radiocomponents as can be seen
from VLBI (Hervet et al. 2016; Piner & Edwards 2018). It does not show
a thermal accretion disk signature in the blue-UV, nor does it exhibit
strong inverse-Compton dominance in the broadband SED."
- "An unusual feature, however, is the dramatic change of the
synchrotron bump (shape and peak frequency) between low and high
activity states. The high state, as observed in the 2017 flare and
post-flare SED, presents a synchrotron peak between the UV and soft
X-rays, typical of HBLs."
- "Due to the relative flatness of the synchrotron bump, it is
difficult to determine the precise peak frequency value, but the
favored post-flare model shows a synchrotron peak at log_10(nu_peak)
of 15.75. The low state is characterized by a much more constrained
peak frequency, of log_10(nu_peak of 14.49 +0.17 -0.54 from the model,
with boundaries from the IR and optical data—consistent with the
results of Nilsson et al. (2018), based on the Roma-BZCAT Multifrequency
Catalog up to 2012. Thus, if only this low state were considered, this
source would be classified as an IBL."

Information on the jet:

From Lister et al. (2019):
- "All three innermost features of this low redshift BL Lac object
(z = 0.131) show small but significant inward motion of approximately
25 micro-as y-1 (0.2 c)."


Seen by: MAGIC, VERITAS
Want a reference added? Send a bibtex entry to the TeVCat Team
Try TevCat 2.0 Beta!