A Multi-frequency campaign on the gamma-ray loud blazar W Comae

Abstract

We report preliminary results of a multi-frequency campaign on the TeV candidate blazar W Comae (z=0.102). Flux limits by Whipple and HEGRA show that the TeV flux must be considerably below an E^-2 extrapolation of the EGRET flux. In the framework of proton-initiated cascade models, this implies a moderate amount of gamma-ray attenuation due to pair production in collisions with low-energy photons of the extragalactic infrared background. In a simple SSC model, the gamma-ray spectrum cuts off intrinsically just below TeV without requiring external absorption.