Discovery of Very High Energy gamma - ray emission from the extreme BL Lac object H2356-309 with H.E.S.S.

To appear in proceedings of 29th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2005)International audienceThe understanding of acceleration mechanisms in active galactic nuclei (AGN) jets and the measurement of the extragalactic-background-light (EBL) density are closely linked and require the detection of a large sample of very-high-energy (VHE) emitting extragalactic objects at varying redshifts. We report here on the discovery with the H.E.S.S. (High Energy Stereoscopic System) atmospheric-Cherenkov telescopes of the VHE Gamma-ray emission from H2356 - 309, an extreme BL Lac object located at a redshift of 0.165. The observations of this object, which was previously proposed as a southern-hemisphere VHE candidate source, were performed between June and December 2004. The total exposure is 38.9 hours live time, after data quality selection, which yields the detection of a signal at the level of 9.0$\sigma$ (standard deviations)