AGILE detection of transient gamma-ray emission from the PSR B1259-63 region

AGILE is detecting transient gamma-ray emission above 100 MeV from a source near the Galactic plane and positionally consistent with the binary pulsar PSR B1259-63 (J2000 coordinates RA 13 02 47.66, Dec -63 50 08.6; l = 304.1836, b = -0.9916). Integrating from 2010-08-02 06 40 UT to 2010-08-04 04 00 UT, a preliminary maximum likelihood analysis yields a detection centered at Galactic coordinates (l,b) = (304.7,-0.8) 0.6 (stat.) 0.1 (syst.) (RA=196.9,Dec=-63.7 J2000), with a significance level of about 4.5 sigma, and a gamma-ray flux above 2 x 10E-6 ph/cm2/sec for photon energies above 100 MeV.