Three Years of Fermi LAT Flare Advocate Activity

TL;DR

Over three years, the Fermi LAT Flare Advocate service provided rapid analysis, alerts, and summaries of gamma-ray activity, significantly enhancing multi-wavelength observations and international collaboration in high-energy astrophysics.

Contribution

This paper documents the operational experience and scientific impact of the Fermi LAT Flare Advocate service over its first three years.

Findings

Detected numerous gamma-ray flares from blazars and Galactic sources.

Facilitated over 150 Astronomical Telegrams and alerts to other observatories.

Enhanced multi-frequency campaigns and international cooperation.

Abstract

The Fermi Flare Advocate (also known as Gamma-ray Sky Watcher, FA-GSW) service provides for a daily quicklook analysis and review of the high-energy gamma-ray sky seen by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The duty offers alerts for potentially new gamma-ray sources, interesting transients and relevant flares. A public weekly digest containing the main highlights about the GeV gamma-ray sky is published in the web-based Fermi Sky Blog. During the first 3 years of all-sky survey, more than 150 Astronomical Telegrams, several alerts to the TeV Cherenkov telescopes, and targets of opportunity to Swift and other observatories have been realized. This increased the rate of simultaneous multi-frequency observing campaigns and the level of international cooperation. Many gamma-ray flares from blazars (like extraordinary outbursts of 3C 454.3, intense flares of PKS 1510-089, 4C 21.35, PKS 1830-211, AO 0235+164, PKS 1502+106, 3C 279, 3C 273, PKS 1622-253), short/long flux duty cycles, unidentified transients near the Galactic plane (like J0910-5041, J0109+6134, the Galactic center region), flares associated to Galactic sources (like the Crab nebula, the nova V407 Cyg, the microquasar Cyg X-3), emission of the quiet and active sun, were observed by Fermi and communicated by FA-GSWs.