Abstract

The Fermi Flare Advocate program (also known as Gamma-ray Sky Watcher, FA-GSW) is a science operation service providing a continuous day-by-day and quicklook analysis of the high-energy gamma-ray sky seen by the Fermi Large Area Telescope. The volunteer duty, carried out by members of the Fermi LAT team, offers a review of information about the observed gamma-ray sky above 100 MeV energies, providing alerts for potentially new gamma-ray sources, interesting transients and source flares. A weekly digest containing the highlights about the GeV gamma-ray sky is published in the web-based Fermi Sky Blog.

During the first 4 years of all-sky survey, almost 200 Astronomical Telegrams, several alerts to the TeV Cherenkov telescopes, and many targets of opportunity to Swift and other observatories, were realized. Those communications increased the rate of simultaneous multi-frequency observing campaigns and the level of international cooperation. Some highlights and science results triggered by the FA-GSW duty service are presented here.