The number of known very high energy ( VHE ) blazars is \sim 50 , which is very small in comparison to the number of blazars detected in other frequencies .
This situation is a handicap for population studies of blazars , which emit about half of their luminosity in the \gamma -ray domain .
Moreover , VHE blazars , if distant , allow for the study of the environment that the high-energy \gamma -rays traverse in their path towards the Earth , like the extragalactic background light ( EBL ) and the intergalactic magnetic field ( IGMF ) , and hence they have a special interest for the astrophysics community .
We present the first VHE detection of 1ES 0033+595 with a statistical significance of 5.5 \sigma .
The VHE emission of this object is constant throughout the MAGIC observations ( 2009 August and October ) , and can be parameterized with a power law with an integral flux above 150 GeV of ( 7.1 \pm 1.3 ) \times 10 ^ { -12 } { \mathrm { ph cm ^ { -2 } s ^ { -1 } } } and a photon index of ( 3.8 \pm 0.7 ) .
We model its spectral energy distribution ( SED ) as the result of inverse Compton scattering of synchrotron photons .
For the study of the SED we used simultaneous optical R-band data from the KVA telescope , archival X-ray data by Swift as well as INTEGRAL , and simultaneous high energy ( HE , 300 MeV – 10 GeV ) \gamma -ray data from the Fermi LAT observatory .
Using the empirical approach of Prandini et al .
( 2010 ) and the Fermi -LAT and MAGIC spectra for this object , we estimate the redshift of this source to be 0.34 \pm 0.08 \pm 0.05 .
This is a relevant result because this source is possibly one of the ten most distant VHE blazars known to date , and with further ( simultaneous ) observations could play an important role in blazar population studies , as well as future constraints on the EBL and IGMF .