No Arabic abstract
The imager on board INTEGRAL (IBIS) presently provides the most detailed sky images ever obtained at energies above 30 keV. The telescope is based on a coded aperture imaging system which allows to obtain sky images in a large field of view 29deg x 29deg with an angular resolution of 12. The System Point Spread Function of the telescope and its detailed characteristics are here described along with the specific analysis algorithms used to derive the accurate point-like source locations. The derived location accuracy is studied using the first in-flight calibration data on strong sources for the IBIS/ISGRI system. The dependence of the calibrated location accuracy with the signal to noise ratio of the sources is presented. These preliminary studies demonstrate that the IBIS/ISGRI telescope and the standard scientific analysis software allow source localizations with accuracy at 90% confidence level better than 1 for sources with signal to noise ratios > 30 over the whole field of view, in agreement with the expected performances of the instrument.
We present an empirical correction of sky coordinates of X-ray photons obtained with the XIS aboard the Suzaku satellite to improve the source position accuracy and restore the point-spread function (PSF). The XIS images are known to have an uncertainty in position of up to 1 arcmin, and to show considerable degradations of the PSF. These problems are caused by a drifting of the satellite attitude due to thermal distortion of the side panel 7, where the attitude control system is mounted. We found that the position error averaged over a pointing observation can be largely reduced by using the relation between the deviation of the source position in the DETX direction and the ecliptic latitude of the pointing target. We parameterized the wobbling of the source position synchronized with the satellite orbital period with temperatures of onboard radiators and elapsed time since the night-day transition of the spacecraft. We developed software, aeattcor, to correct the image drift using these parameters, and applied it to 27 point-source images. We show that the radius of the 90% error circle of the source position was reduced to 19 arcsec and the PSF was sharpened. These improvements have enhanced the scientific capability of the Suzaku XIS.
We present the new energy calibration of the ISGRI detector onboard INTEGRAL, that has been implemented in the Offline Scientific Analysis (OSA) version 10. With the previous OSA 9 version, a clear departure from stability of both W and 22Na background lines was observed after MJD 54307 (revolution ~583). To solve this problem, the energy correction in OSA 10 uses: 1) a new description for the gain depending on the time and the pulse rise time, 2) an improved temperature correction per module, and 3) a varying shape of the low threshold, corrected for the change in energy resolution. With OSA 10, both background lines show a remarkably stable behavior with a relative energy variation below 1% around the nominal position (>6% in OSA 9), and the energy reconstruction at low energies is more stable compared to previous O
We report the detection of both the 67.9 and 78.4 keV 44Sc gamma-ray lines in Cassiopeia A with the INTEGRAL IBIS/ISGRI instrument. Besides the robustness provided by spectro-imaging observations, the main improvements compared to previous measurements are a clear separation of the two 44Sc lines together with an improved significance of the detection of the hard X-ray continuum up to 100 keV. These allow us to refine the determination of the 44Ti yield and to constrain the nature of the nonthermal continuum emission. By combining COMPTEL, BeppoSAX/PDS and ISGRI measurements, we find a line flux of (2.5 +/- 0.3)*10(-5) cm(-2) s(-1) leading to a synthesized 44Ti mass of 1.6 (+0.6-0.3)*10(-4) solar mass. This high value suggests that Cas A is peculiar in comparison to other young supernova remnants, from which so far no line emission from 44Ti decay has been unambiguously detected.
We report on preliminary results of IBIS/ISGRI serendipitous observations of Cygnus X-3 in the 15-100 keV energy range during the INTEGRAL Performance and Verification phase. This peculiar microquasar was inside IBIS/ISGRI field of view at a ~ 9 degrees distance from the pointing direction during Cygnus X-1 staring observations in November and December 2002. We analyzed observations from 27 November 2002 to 8 December 2002 with an effective on source exposure time of ~ 300 kiloseconds. Cyg X-3 was always significantly detected in the 15-40 and 40-100 keV energy bands during single exposures lasting between 30 minutes and one hour. The source light curve shows the characteristic 4.8-hour modulation with a shape consistent with a standard template. The two light curves phase zero have no measurable offset and their values are consistent with historical ephemeris. These results show that even at this early stage of the mission, IBIS/ISGRI is capable of producing high quality scientific results on highly off axis, relatively bright targets.
In this paper we report on the fourth soft gamma-ray source catalog obtained with the IBIS gamma-ray imager on board the INTEGRAL satellite. The scientific dataset is based on more than 70Ms of high quality observations performed during the first five and a half years of Core Program and public observations. Compared to previous IBIS surveys, this catalog includes a substantially increased coverage of extragalactic fields, and comprises more than 700 high-energy sources detected in the energy range 17--100 keV, including both transients and faint persistent objects which can only be revealed with longer exposure times. A comparison is provided with the latest Swift/BAT survey results.