Picture of the Month

March 2002

A few artificial Gamma-ray Bursts have been produced during the INTEGRAL Payload Calibrations in ESTEC by switching on and off
an X-ray generator. The ISGRI data have been analyzed in real time by the INTEGRAL Burst Alert Software (IBAS) running at the ISDC.
The IBAS programs triggered on the bursts and produced the image, and light curve shown in the figure.
For this test the IBAS imaging programs had to be modified to take into account
the diverging X-ray beam due to the finite distance of the source.
The ISGRI image shown uses data integrated over 10 seconds. The observed count
rate corresponds roughly to about 0.7 Crab. During the longest burst interval
(130 s) the fluence is estimated to about 1.5 x 10-6 ergs/cm**2 (15 - 70 keV).

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