Searching for Flares in Hard X-rays/Soft Gamma Rays with GBM Using the Earth Occultation Technique
Abstract
Employing the NaI detectors of the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) onboard NASA's Fermi satellite, fluxes of hard x-ray/soft gamma-ray sources can be measured by using the Earth Occultation Technique (EOT). EOT uses the step-like features in the detector count rate caused by a source passing into or out of occultation by the Earth to derive fluxes. GBM's large field of view allows for all-sky monitoring of sources at energies from 8 keV to 1 MeV. Because of the extreme variability of the sky at these energies, the ability to observe the sky in the hard x-ray/soft gamma-ray regime is important. While there are presently two other all-sky monitors that observe in the hard x-rays, the Monitor of All-sky X-ray Imaging (MAXI) on the International Space Station and the Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) on the Swift satellite, but only GBM has the capability to observe sources at soft gamma-ray energies. Here we present results from a search for transient events from sources in the GBM EOT catalog from the first 3 years of operation of Fermi.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #219
- Pub Date:
- January 2012
- Bibcode:
- 2012AAS...21940804R