| The Solar Tower Atmospheric Cherenkov Effect Experiment (STACEE) is a wavefront-sampling atmospheric Cherenkov telescope which uses an array of solar heliostat mirrors as its primary optic. STACEE is designed to detect air showers from astrophysical gamma rays with energies between 50 and 250 GeV. Recent observations of the BL Lac object W Comae (ON+231), made in the spring of 2003 using STACEE, detect no significant gamma ray emission. The implications of this null result for the composition of the relativistic jet in W Comae is discussed, examining both leptonic and hadronic jet models from the literature. The 95% confidence level upper limit on the flux ranges from 1.5–3.5 × 10−10 cm−2 s−1 above 100 GeV for the leptonic models, and from 0.5–1.1 × 10−10 cm−2 s−1 above 150 GeV for the hadronic models. |
