0000000000620312
AUTHOR
G. K. Skinner
The INTEGRAL/SPI response and the Crab observations
The Crab region was observed several times by INTEGRAL for calibration purposes. This paper aims at underlining the systematic interactions between (i) observations of this reference source, (ii) in-flight calibration of the instrumental response and (iii) the development and validation of the analysis tools of the SPI spectrometer. It first describes the way the response is produced and how studies of the Crab spectrum lead to improvements and corrections in the initial response. Then, we present the tools which were developed to extract spectra from the SPI observation data and finally a Crab spectrum obtained with one of these methods, to show the agreement with previous experiments. We …
The INTEGRAL experiment
The International Gamma-ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL) is conceived as the next logical step in gamma-ray astronomy after the US Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (CGRO) and the French/Russian SIGMA mission. The INTEGRAL scientific payload consists of two main instruments (Imager and Spectrometer) and two monitor instruments (X-Ray Monitor and Optical Transient Camera). The INTEGRAL spectrometer "SPI" is optimized for detailed measurements of gamma-ray lines and mapping of diffuse sources. It combines a coded aperture mask with an array of large volume, high-purity germanium detectors. The detectors make precise measurements of the gamma-ray energies over the 20 keV-8 MeV energy range. …