First Results From Superagile In Orbit
Abstract
SuperAGILE is the hard-X rays monitor of the AGILE gamma-ray mission, operating in the energy range 20- 60 keV. It is a coded-mask instrument providing two one-dimensional sky images covering a large field of view ( 1 steradian) with an angular resolution of 6 arcmin and a sensitivity of 15 mCrab/day.
The main goal of SuperAGILE is the simultaneous monitoring of gamma ray-sources observed by the AGILE gamma-ray imager operating in the energy band 30 MeV-50 GeV. Astrophysical sources expected to be detectable simultaneously by the two instruments include gamma-ray pulsars, AGNs (mostly blazars) and gamma-rays bursts. In addition to its role of monitoring counterparts to gamma-ray sources, SuperAGILE acts as a wide field hard X-ray monitor, observing several sources during the typical 3-week long exposures of the satellite. At the time of writing SuperAGILE detected about 35 sources, few of them extragalactic. In addition, SuperAGILE detected and promptly localized two gamma-ray bursts, and a third one combining a one-dimensional error box with the IPN data. In this paper we will show the status of the experiment in orbit, its calibration and the observational results gathered over the first 7-8 months of nominal operation in orbit. These mostly relate to the main pointings carried out so far: Vela region, Cygnus region, Virgo region and the Galactic center. Using the photon-by-photon SuperAGILE data, for sources in these fields we will show images (with few arcmin resolution), fluxes, timing spectra and light curves on hours to days.- Publication:
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AAS/High Energy Astrophysics Division #10
- Pub Date:
- March 2008
- Bibcode:
- 2008HEAD...10.3604D