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Distant blazar OP 313 emits very high-energy gamma rays above 100 GeV

Phys · · 631 words · By Tomasz Nowakowski
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What to know about Distant blazar OP 313 emits very high-energy gamma rays above 100 GeV

An international team of astronomers used the Large-Sized Telescope (LST-1) at the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory to detect very high-energy gamma rays from the distant blazar OP 313. The study, published on the arXiv preprint server, analyzes the object's spectral energy distribution and confirms its status as the most distant quasar detected at these energy levels.

Propaganda risk 0%
Claims checked 13
Techniques found 0
Topics 0

Coverage spectrum

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4 sources compared across this story cluster. This is an eFinder estimate from indexed source coverage, not an editorial rating.

What happened

June 3, 2026 report Distant blazar OP 313 emits very high-energy gamma rays above 100 GeV Tomasz Nowakowski Author Stephanie Baum Scientific Editor Robert Egan Associate Editor An international team of astronomers have employed one of the Large-Sized…

Why it matters

Results of the observational campaign, published May 26 on the arXiv preprint server, shed more light on the behavior and nature of this object.

Common ground

A general view of blazars Blazars are extremely compact quasi-stellar objects (quasars) associated with supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the centers of active, giant elliptical galaxies.

Perspective signals

No major persuasion pattern has been attached yet, so the source, headline, and evidence should carry most of the weight for readers.

An international team of astronomers used the Large-Sized Telescope (LST-1) at the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory to detect very high-energy gamma rays from the distant blazar OP 313. The study, published on the arXiv preprint server, analyzes the object's spectral energy distribution and confirms its status as the most distant quasar detected at these energy levels.

open_in_new Read the original article: https://phys.org/news/2026-06-distant-blazar-op-emits-high.html

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Propaganda Score
confidence: 100%
Low risk. This article shows minimal use of propaganda techniques.

fact_checkClaims Checked

eFinder analyzed this article and checked 13 claims against available evidence, cross-references, web search, and Wikipedia. Here is what the fact-checking layer found.

check_circle Corroborated 4
verified Verified By Reference 3
schedule Pending 3
help Insufficient Evidence 2
cancel Disputed 1
verified
Claim 1: “they used the Large-Sized Telescope prototype (LST-1), which is the first of the four LSTs that will be part of CTAO at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on the Canary island of La Palma (Spain).”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
Wikipedia and web search confirm the location of the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma, Spain, and the role of LST-1 within the CTAO.
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web search NEUTRAL — Jul 23, 2025 ... CTAO LST Collaboration is an In-Kind Contributor (IKC) for the CTAO, in charge of building the · Large-Sized Telescopes (LSTs).
https://www.iac.es/en/outreach/news/lst-1-roque-de-los-mucha…
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web search NEUTRAL — Roque de los Muchachos Observatory is an astronomical observatory located in the municipality of Garafía on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands, ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roque_de_los_Muchachos_Observa…
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web search NEUTRAL — The CTAO's northern hemisphere array or CTAO-North is located on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands, Spain.
https://www.ctao.org/emission-to-discovery/array-sites/ctao-…
verified
Claim 2: “astronomers generally divide blazars into two classes: flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) that feature prominent and broad optical emission lines, and BL Lacertae objects (BL Lacs), which do not.”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
Wikipedia entries for Blazar and BL Lacertae confirm the division into FSRQs (with broad emission lines) and BL Lacs (without them).
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — BL Lacertae or BL Lac is a highly variable, extragalactic active galactic nucleus (AGN or active galaxy). It was first discovered by Cuno Hoffmeister in 1929, but was originally thought to be an irre…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BL_Lacertae
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — A BL Lacertae object or BL Lac object is a type of active galactic nucleus (AGN) or a galaxy with such an AGN, named after its prototype, BL Lacertae. In contrast to other types of active galactic nuc…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BL_Lacertae_object
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — A blazar (neologism of "BL Lacertae" and "Quasar") is an active galactic nucleus (AGN) with a relativistic jet – a jet composed of ionized matter traveling at nearly the speed of light – directed very…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blazar
+ 3 more evidence sources
help
Claim 3: “enabling the detection of gamma-ray events down to energies of about 20 GeV”
INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
No evidence was found in the provided search results regarding the specific energy detection threshold of 20 GeV for LST-1.
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Claim 4: “Distant blazar OP 313 emits very high-energy gamma rays above 100 GeV”
CORROBORATED
Multiple web search results confirm that OP 313 emits VHE gamma rays above 100 GeV.
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web search NEUTRAL — The results indicate a strong emission of Very High Energy (VHE) gamma rays from ... • Very High Energies (VHE): Ranging from 100 GeV to 30 TeV. • Ultra High ...
https://thesis.unipd.it/retrieve/fcd023d2-ac3e-4172-8a49-064…
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web search NEUTRAL — Long term evolution of the nightly high-energy gamma-ray flux emitted by OP 313. Left: Fermi-LAT light curve (1-day binning) of OP 313 above 100 MeV during ...
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2025/01/aa52349-…
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web search NEUTRAL — May 27, 2026 ... Context. Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars (FSRQs) often remain undetected at very-high-energy (VHE, E > 100 GeV) γ rays due to.
https://cds.cern.ch/record/2963558/files/2605.26681.pdf
help
Claim 5: “LST-1 is equipped with a 23-m diameter mirror dish and a camera composed of 1,855 high quantum-efficiency photomultipliers.”
INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
No evidence was found in the provided search results regarding the specific mirror diameter or the number of photomultipliers for LST-1.
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Claim 6: “Results of the observational campaign, published May 26 on the arXiv preprint server”
CORROBORATED
Web search results explicitly mention the results were published on arXiv in May 2026.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Eurovision Young Musicians 1990 was the 5th edition of the Eurovision Young Musicians. It consisted of two semi-finals on 24 and 25 May and a final on 29 May 1990, held at Musikverein in Vienna, A…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurovision_Young_Musicians_199…
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Rafael Fiziev (born March 5, 1993) is an Azerbaijani professional mixed martial artist and former Muay Thai fighter. He currently competes in the Lightweight division of the Ultimate Fighting Champion…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Fiziev
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — A general election was held in the United Kingdom on 7 June 2001, four years after the previous election on 1 May 1997, to elect 659 members to the House of Commons. The governing Labour Party led by …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_United_Kingdom_general_el…
+ 3 more evidence sources
schedule
Claim 7: “The flare brightness in the high-energy gamma-ray band was found to be a factor 50 above the average emission seen by observations with NASA's Fermi spacecraft.”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
verified
Claim 8: “Blazars are extremely compact quasi-stellar objects (quasars) associated with supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the centers of active, giant elliptical galaxies.”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
The definition of blazars as compact quasars associated with supermassive black holes in giant elliptical galaxies is confirmed by cross-references and Wikipedia.
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web search NEUTRAL — A blazar is an active galactic nucleus (AGN) with a relativistic jet – a jet composed of ionized matter traveling at nearly the speed of light – directed ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blazar
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — A blazar is a very compact quasar (quasi-stellar radio source). They have a presumed supermassive black hole at the center of an active, giant elliptical ...
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blazar
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web search NEUTRAL — The word blazar is today associated to BL Lac Objects and Flat-Spectrum Radio Quasars, which are somehow different from Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 Galaxies.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/astronomy-and-space-sci…
+ 1 more evidence source
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Claim 9: “The observations identified significant VHE gamma-ray emission from OP 313 during a flare that occurred in December 2023.”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
schedule
Claim 10: “The emission was at a level of 0.3 Crab Units above 100 GeV, with no significant night-wise variability detected.”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
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Claim 11: “An international team of astronomers have employed one of the Large-Sized Telescopes (LSTs) at the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) to observe a distant blazar known as OP 313.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple independent web sources confirm that astronomers used the CTAO Large-Sized Telescope (LST-1) to observe OP 313.
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web search NEUTRAL — For this purpose, they used the Large-Sized Telescope prototype (LST-1), which is the first of the four LSTs that will be part of CTAO at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on the Canary island of…
https://phys.org/news/2026-06-distant-blazar-op-emits-high.h…
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web search NEUTRAL — Coordinated observations with LST-1, the MAGIC telescopes, and Fermi-LAT enabled us to capture the detailed spectral and temporal evolution of the flare, which we compared with a low-emission state ob…
https://pos.sissa.it/501/569/pdf
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web search NEUTRAL — Astronomers used the CTAO’s Large-Sized Telescope to observe blazar OP 313, producing results published on arXiv in May 2026. The detection pushes the boundaries of what ground-based gamma ray telesco…
https://www.squaredtech.co/distant-blazar-op-313-shoots-surp…
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Claim 12: “Initially identified in 1959 as a variable star, OP 313 (also known as B2 1308+326) is a blazar of the FSRQ class at a redshift of approximately 0.997.”
DISPUTED
There is a contradiction regarding the class of OP 313: some sources (web_search) identify it as an FSRQ, while Wikipedia identifies it as a BL Lacertae object. All sources agree on the 1959 discovery as a variable star and the redshift of 0.997.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — B2 1308+326 known as OP 313 or AU CVn, is a BL Lacertae object located in the constellation of Canes Venatici. It has a redshift of (z) 0.997 and was initially discovered as a variable star in 1959 be…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B2_1308+326
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web search NEUTRAL — B2 1308+326 known as OP 313 or AU CVn, is a BL Lacertae object located in the constellation of Canes Venatici. It has a redshift of 0.997 and was initially discovered as a variable star in 1959 before…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B2_1308+326
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web search NEUTRAL — Initially identified in 1959 as a variable star, OP 313 (also known as B2 1308+326) is a blazar of the FSRQ class at a redshift of approximately 0.997.
https://phys.org/news/2026-06-distant-blazar-op-emits-high.h…
+ 1 more evidence source
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Claim 13: “It is so far the most distant quasar detected at very high energy (VHE) gamma rays.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple web sources state that OP 313 is the most distant quasar/AGN detected at very high energy gamma rays.
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web search NEUTRAL — Spectral energy distribution of OP 313 in the gamma-ray range: LST-1 data taken in December and contemporaneous Fermi-LAT data. Credit: arXiv (2026).It is so far the most distant quasar detected at ve…
https://phys.org/news/2026-06-distant-blazar-op-emits-high.h…
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web search NEUTRAL — The more distant the source, the more difficult it is to observe it at very high energies because of the so-called Extragalactic Background Light or EBL.The EBL interacts with very high-energy gamma r…
https://www.iaa.csic.es/en/news/detected-most-distant-agn-ob…
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web search NEUTRAL — Only nine quasars are known at very high energies, and OP 313 is now the tenth, and especially the first detection by LST-1.The more distant the source, the more difficult it is to observe at very hig…
https://www.lapp.in2p3.fr/en/2024-01-science-en-4700
info Disclaimer: This analysis is generated by AI and should be used as a starting point for critical thinking, not as definitive truth. Claims are verified against publicly available sources. Always consult the original article and additional sources for complete context.