VERITAS long-term (2006-2014) observations of the BL Lac object 1ES 0806+524

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of over eight years of VERITAS observations of the BL Lac object 1ES 0806+524, including its long-term VHE gamma-ray spectrum and variability, based on 70 hours of data.

Contribution

It provides the first long-term VHE gamma-ray observational results of 1ES 0806+524, including spectrum and variability analysis over multiple seasons.

Findings

Detection significance was significantly improved with multi-season data.

The average VHE spectrum of 1ES 0806+524 was characterized.

Long-term VHE variability constraints were established.

Abstract

The discovery of the high-frequency-peaked BL Lac object 1ES 0806+524 (z=0.138) as a source of very-high-energy (VHE, E>100 GeV) gamma-ray photons was announced in 2008 by the VERITAS Collaboration, at a level of 1.8% of the Crab Nebula flux above 300 GeV. Since then, VERITAS has continued observing the source over multiple seasons, significantly improving the significance of the detection. We report the results of the analysis of the 2006-2014 VERITAS data, corresponding to a total exposure of about 70 hours. We present the new, average VHE spectrum of the source, together with the multi-year light-curve constraining long-term VHE variability.