Earth occultation technique with EGRET calorimeter data above 1 MeV
- University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112 (United States)
- NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771 (United States)
- Northrop-Grumman, Bethpage, New York 11714 (United States)
The technique of earth occultation has produced many exciting results from the BATSE data. We examine the possibility of using this technique on the Total Absorption Shower Calorimeter (TASC) of EGRET. The TASC has an effective area of a few 1000 cm{sup 2} and is 8 radiation lengths deep. Spectra from 1-200 MeV are collected every 33 sec and the rate at 4 energies is monitored every 2 sec. The detector is unshielded and uncollimated so the background is large. The statistical error on the background measurements require several days of exposure to detect the Crab at the lowest energies. Longer exposures would be needed due to systematic errors in determining the background. However, the wide field of view (the effective area is nearly 1000 cm{sup 2} even through the back of the spacecraft) could be used to monitor variability and confirm fluxes of sources such as the black hole candidates, Cyg X-1 and GRO J0422+33.
- OSTI ID:
- 21172424
- Journal Information:
- AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 410, Issue 1; Conference: 4. Compton symposium, Williamsburg, VA (United States), 27-30 Apr 1997; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.54050; (c) 1997 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0094-243X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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