Investigating the TeV Morphology of MGRO J1908+06 with VERITAS
astro-ph.HE
/ Authors
E. Aliu, S. Archambault, T. Aune, B. Behera, M. Beilicke, W. Benbow, K. Berger, R. Bird, J. H. Buckley, V. Bugaev
and 78 more authors
J. V Cardenzana, M. Cerruti, X. Chen, L. Ciupik, E. Collins-Hughes, M. P. Connolly, W. Cui, J. Dumm, V. V. Dwarkadas, M. Errando, A. Falcone, S. Federici, Q. Feng, J. P. Finley, H. Fleischhack, P. Fortin, L. Fortson, A. Furniss, N. Galante, D. Gall, G. H. Gillanders, S. Griffin, S. T. Griffiths, J. Grube
/ Abstract
We report on deep observations of the extended TeV gamma-ray source MGRO J1908+06 made with the VERITAS very high energy (VHE) gamma-ray observatory. Previously, the TeV emission has been attributed to the pulsar wind nebula (PWN) of the Fermi-LAT pulsar PSR J1907+0602. We detect MGRO J1908+06 at a significance level of 14 standard deviations (14 sigma) and measure a photon index of 2.20 +/- 0.10_stat +/- 0.20_sys. The TeV emission is extended, covering the region near PSR J1907+0602 and also extending towards SNR G40.5--0.5. When fitted with a 2-dimensional Gaussian, the intrinsic extension has a standard deviation of sigma_src = 0.44 +/- 0.02 degrees. In contrast to other TeV PWNe of similar age in which the TeV spectrum softens with distance from the pulsar, the TeV spectrum measured near the pulsar location is consistent with that measured at a position near the rim of G40.5--0.5, 0.33 degrees away.