Observations of Spin-Powered Pulsars with the AGILE Gamma-Ray Telescope

Journal Article · Wed Dec 24 00:00:00 EST 2008 · AIP Conference Proceedings

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3076640· OSTI ID:21255151

Pellizzoni, A; Pilia, M; Possenti, M ^[1]; Fornari, F; Caraveo, P; Mereghetti, S ^[2]; Del Monte, E; Tavani, M ^[3]

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1. INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Cagliari, loc. Poggio dei Pini, strada 54, I-09012 Capoterra (Italy)
2. INAF/IASF-Milano, via E. Bassini 15, I-20133 Milano (Italy)
3. INAF/IASF-Roma, via del Fosso del Cavaliere 100, I-00133 Roma (Italy)

AGILE is a small gamma-ray astronomy satellite mission of the Italian Space Agency dedicated to high-energy astrophysics launched in 2007 April. It provides large sky exposure levels (> or approx. 10{sup 9} cm{sup 2} s per year on the Galactic Plane) with sensitivity peaking at E{approx}400 MeV(and simultaneous X-ray monitoring in the 18-60 keV band) where the bulk of pulsar energy output is typically released. Its {approx}1 {mu}s is absolute time tagging capability makes it perfectly suited for the study of gamma-ray pulsars following up on the CGRO/EGRET heritage. In this paper we summarize the timing results obtained during the first year of AGILE observations of the known gamma-ray pulsars Vela, Crab, Geminga and B 1706-4. AGILE collected a large number of gamma-ray photons from EGRET pulsars ({approx}10,000 pulsed counts for Vela) in only few months of observations unveiling new interesting features at sub-millisecond level in the pulsars' high-energy light-curves and paving the way to the discovery of new gamma-ray pulsars.

• OSTI ID: 21255151
• Journal Information: AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 1085, Issue 1; Conference: 4. international meeting on high energy gamma-ray astronomy, Heidelberg (Germany), 7-11 Jul 2008; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.3076640; (c) 2009 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0094-243X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS//MATHEMATICS, COMPUTING, AND INFORMATION SCIENCE
ASTROPHYSICS
GAMMA ASTRONOMY
GAMMA RADIATION
KEV RANGE 10-100
MEV RANGE 100-1000
NEUTRON STARS
PHOTONS
PULSARS
RADIO TELESCOPES
SATELLITES
SENSITIVITY
SPIN
VISIBLE RADIATION
X RADIATION