New constraints on the mid-IR EBL from the HESS discovery of VHE γ-rays from 1ES 0229+200

Aims. To investigate the very high energy (VHE: > 100 GeV) y-ray emission from the high-frequency peaked BL Lac IES 0229+200. Methods. Observations of IES 0229+200 at energies above 580 GeV were performed with the High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS) in 2005 and 2006. Results. IES 0229+200 is discovered by HESS to be an emitter of VHE photons. A signal is detected at the 6.6σ level in the HESS observations (41.8 h live time). The integral flux above 580 GeV is (9.4 ± 1.5 _stat ± 1.9 _syst) × 10 ^-13 cm ^-2 s ^-1 corresponding to ∼1.8% of the flux observed from the Crab Nebula. The data show no evidence for significant variability on any time scale. The observed spectrum is characterized by a hard power law (T = 2.50 ± 0.19 _stat ± 0.10 _syst) from 500 GeV to ∼15 TeV. Conclusions. The high-energy range and hardness of the observed spectrum, coupled with the object's relatively large redshift (z = 0.1396), enable the strongest constraints so far on the density of the Extragalactic Background Light (EBL) in the mid-infrared band. Assuming that the emitted spectrum is not harder than T _mt ≈ 1.5, the HESS data support an EBL spectrum σλ ^-1 and density close to the lower limit from source counts measured by Spitzer, confirming the previous indications from the HEGRA data of IES 1426+428 (z = 0.129). Irrespective of the EBL models used, the intrinsic spectrum of IES 0229+200 is hard, thus locating the high-energy peak of its spectral energy distribution above a few TeV.