Abstract
Since the commissioning of the fifth, largest telescope (28 m diameter) in December 2012, H.E.S.S. II is the only hybrid array of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes operating in the energy range ~ 20 GeV to ~ 100 TeV. The last years have seen a tremendous effort in the design, implementation and optimization of analysis techniques suitable for monoscopic & stereoscopic events. At the same time, a complete redesign of the acquisition scheme resulted in a very significant speed-up of repointing, allowing the big telescope to be on target just ~ 20 s after receiving a Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) alert notification. With its deep sensitivity, broad energy range, and fast reaction time, H.E.S.S. II provides an unprecedented high-quality view of the Universe at the highest energies, in a multi-wavelength and multi-messenger approach which is currently based on agreements many collaborations including in particular Fermi, IceCube, ANTARES and VIRGO/LIGO.In the last years, we conducted deep observations of several galactic regions of primordial importance, among them are the Galactic Center region and its halo (particularly relevant for dark matter searches), the Crab Nebula, the supernova remnant RXJ 1713.7-3946, the Vela pulsar and several binary systems such as LS 5039 and PSR B1259-63. Outside the Milky Way, the blazars PKS 2155-304 and PG 1553+113 have been extensively monitored, and H.E.S.S.-II forms part of a multi-wavelength campaign of the flaring activity of Mrk 501 in 2014.Highlights of these observations with H.E.S.S.-II have been presented and discussed at the conference. Moreover, after ten years of H.E.S.S. phase I observations, we are currently preparing a Legacy Release of the H.E.S.S. Galactic Plane Survey. A special edition of Astronomy & Astrophysics is currently under preparation, and will contain many important legacy results from H.E.S.S.-I. Major results from this very deep scan of the MilkyWay performed with H.E.S.S.-I, including among others spectacular findings from the Large Magellanic Cloud, have been presented.
Highlights
Since the commissioning of the fifth big telescope in December 2012, H.E.S.S
Galactic plane survey (HGPS) [1] is a major long-term project, corresponding to ∼ 2700 hours of high-quality observations acquired with the H.E.S.S.-I telescope array from 2004 to 2013
Less than half of the source (31) are firmly identified, the largest population consisting of pulsar wind nebulæ (PWN) followed by supernova remnants (SNRs) and binary systems
Summary
Establishing new classes of sources as γ-ray emitters. The largest Imaging Atmospheric Cerenkov Telescope, namely the fifth telescope of H.E.S.S.-II (CT5), was inaugurated in September 2012 and is operating regularly, allowing observation of γ-rays down to 10 GeV. The HGPS data set combines dedicated survey operations (using a fixed-grid pointing strategy) with deep observations of sources of particular interest, leading to non uniform exposure and sensitivity across the survey region (Fig. 1, lower panel), the point-source sensitivity being always better than ∼ 2% in 0.2 E 100 TeV. The HGPS is a unique tool for population studies (e.g. PWN [7] or SNR [8]). It appears that most young and powerful pulsars have a PWN detected in VHE. This allows for the first time to construct a PWN evolution model. The paper and legacy data will be released in 2017, including FITS maps and a source catalog (morphology & spectra)
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