INTEGRAL Picture Of the Month
January 2022
(Click here to view full size)
17-year INTEGRAL hard X-ray sky in one shot
Thanks to the long-term operations of INTEGRAL, a large archive of
unique observations of the hard X-ray sky has been accumulated. Taking
advantage of the data gathered over 17 years with IBIS, a survey of hard
X-ray sources in the 17-60 keV band has been conducted. The survey
provides also flux information in different energy bands up to 290 keV.
This new hard X-ray all-sky survey includes a number of deep
extragalactic fields and the deepest ever hard X-ray survey of our
Galaxy. The catalog of sources includes 929 objects detected on
time-averaged sky map regions, i.e., mainly dominated by persistent hard
X-ray emitters. Among the identified sources of known or suspected
nature, 376 are associated with the Galaxy and Magellanic clouds,
including 145 low-mass and 115 high-mass X-ray binaries, 79 cataclysmic
variables, and 37 of other types. 440 are extragalactic, including 429
active galactic nuclei (AGNs), 2 ultra-luminous sources, one supernova
(AT2018cow) and 8 galaxy clusters. 113 sources remain unclassified. 46
of these objects are detected in the hard X-ray band for the first time.
The image shows an interactive map, created on the basis of the 17-year
(2003-2019) sky images obtained with IBIS in the 30-80 keV energy band.
One can move around on the map, by using your mouse. It is proposed to
switch on a full-screen mode. Some of the brightest and most famous
galactic and extragalactic X-ray emitters are marked with squares for
reference. Note that around some very bright sources the characteristic
systematic noise appears in the shape of crosses or circles. The
position of the Galactic plane can be easily recognized by
an impressive horizontal band of X-ray sources.
Credits:
- Roman Krivonos, Sergey Sazonov, Ekaterina Kuznetsova, Alexander
Lutovinov, Ilya Mereminskiy, Sergey Tsygankov,
2021, MNRAS, in press
https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.02996
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