The fourth soft gamma-ray source catalogue obtained with
the IBIS gamma-ray imager on board the INTEGRAL satellite
(
Bird et al. 2010, ApJS 186, 1)
contains more than 700 high-energy sources detected in the energy
range 17-100 keV, including both transients and faint persistent
objects. For somewhat more than 300 sources which are a member of
our Galaxy (including X-ray binaries, black holes, neutron stars,
and other strange objects), we have distance information available
(
Bodaghee et al. 2007, A&A 467, 585,
and 2012, private communication). Note that the uncertainties in
these distances can range between 0.1 and a few kiloparsecs, depending
on the class of source and method of distance determination. These
sources can thus be represented in a 3D fashion.
To celebrate INTEGRAL's
10-years in-space birthday,
a couple of movies including a 3D-view of our Galaxy as seen by
INTEGRAL, were released. For the INTEGRAL detected sources we use
fuzzy spheres of which the size and colours are based on the
intensities in the 17-35-60-100 keV bands taken from the All-Sky
Hard X-ray Survey by Krivonos et al.
(
2010, A&A 523, 61,
and 2012, private communication). Many of the INTEGRAL sources are
annotated with (part of) their astrophysical name. To enhance the
image we embed these sources in an artists impression of the Galaxy.
Now, imagine you travel beyond the centre of our Galaxy and look back
to our home. You get the stunning view depicted above, which no-one
has seen ever before (and in reality we never will be able to). From
behind the Galactic Centre we are facing towards our Sun (the tiny
yellow blob just above the centre of the image). This image is a still
from the
movie
containing the results from the
Galactic bulge monitoring program
and a 3D journey through Galactic space. During the 3D part we first
zoom out of the Galaxy, showing a bird's eye view of the gamma and
hard X-ray sources in our Galaxy detected by INTEGRAL, and then conclude
with a fly-through of the central part of the Galactic bulge, before
returning to our Solar System and the orbit of INTEGRAL around Earth.
More stills, as well as the celebration movies can be found at
http://integral.esac.esa.int/BULGE/links/Movies.html.
