Search Publications
The episodic and multiscale Galactic Centre
Krabbe, Alfred; Bryant, Aaron
Within the central few hundred parsecs of the Milky Way, extending from longitude l = -1° to 1.5°, lies the Central Molecular Zone of the Galactic Centre. This extraordinary region is defined by a diverse variety of ISM features in numerous stages of evolution. Molecular cloud H2 volume densities range from 103-8 cm-3
The INTEGRAL view on black hole X-ray binaries
Rodriguez, J.; Wilms, J.; Motta, S. E. +11 more
INTEGRAL is an ESA mission in fundamental astrophysics that was launched in October 2002. It has been in orbit for over 18 years, during which it has been observing the high-energy sky with a set of instruments specifically designed to probe the emission from hard X-ray and soft γ-ray sources. This paper is devoted to the subject of black hole bin…
Steady-state nucleosynthesis throughout the Galaxy
Wang, Wei; Martin, Pierrick; Diehl, Roland +6 more
The measurement and astrophysical interpretation of characteristic γ-ray lines from nucleosynthesis was one of the prominent science goals of the INTEGRAL mission and in particular its spectrometer SPI. Emission from 26Al and from 60Fe decay lines, due to their My decay times, originates from accumulated ejecta of nucleosynth…
INTEGRAL reloaded: Spacecraft, instruments and ground system
Mereghetti, Sandro; Kretschmar, Peter; Götz, Diego +85 more
The European Space Agency's INTErnational Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (ESA/INTEGRAL) was launched aboard a Proton-DM2 rocket on 17 October 2002 at 06:41 CEST, from Baikonur in Kazakhstan. Since then, INTEGRAL has been providing long, uninterrupted observations (up to about 47 h, or 170 ksec, per satellite orbit of 2.7 days) with a large fiel…
Multi-messenger astronomy with INTEGRAL
Mereghetti, Sandro; Götz, Diego; Kuulkers, Erik +19 more
At the time of defining the science objectives of the INTernational Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL), such a rapid and spectacular development of multi-messenger astronomy could not have been predicted, with new impulsive phenomena becoming accessible through different channels. Neutrino telescopes have routinely detected energetic neu…
15 years of galactic surveys and hard X-ray background measurements
Tsygankov, Sergey S.; Sunyaev, Rashid; Kuulkers, Erik +15 more
The INTEGRAL hard X-ray surveys have proven to be of fundamental importance. INTEGRAL has mapped the Galactic plane with its large field of view and excellent sensitivity. Such hard X-ray snapshots of the whole Milky Way on a time scale of a year are beyond the capabilities of past and current narrow-FOV grazing incidence X-ray telescopes. By expa…
Synthesis of radioactive elements in novae and supernovae and their use as a diagnostic tool
Hernanz, M.; Siegert, T.; Vink, J. +5 more
Novae and supernovae play a key role in many fields of Astrophysics and Cosmology. Despite their importance, an accurate description of which objects explode and why and how they explode is still lacking. One of the main characteristics of such explosions is that they are the main suppliers of newly synthesized chemical elements in the Galaxy. Sin…
INTEGRAL serendipitous observations of solar and terrestrial X-rays and gamma rays
Churazov, Eugene; Tatischeff, Vincent; Beckmann, Volker +1 more
ESA's INTEGRAL space mission has achieved unique results for solar and terrestrial physics, although spacecraft operations nominally excluded the possibility to point at the Sun or the Earth. The Earth avoidance was, however, exceptionally relaxed for special occultation observations of the Cosmic X-ray Background (CXB), which on some occasions al…
OB Associations and their origins
Wright, Nicholas J.
OB associations are unbound groups of young stars made prominent by their bright OB members, and have long been thought to be the expanded remnants of dense star clusters. They have been important in astrophysics for over a century thanks to their luminous massive stars, though their low-mass members have not been well studied until the last coupl…
SS433: A massive X-ray binary in an advanced evolutionary stage
Cherepashchuk, Anatol; Postnov, Konstantin; Molkov, Sergey +2 more
INTEGRAL IBIS/ISGRI 18-60 keV observations of SS433 performed in 2003-2011 enabled for the first time the hard X-ray phase-resolved orbital and precessional light curves and spectra to be constructed. The spectra can be fitted by a power-law with photon index ≃ 3.8 and remain almost constant while the X-ray flux varies by a factor of a few. This s…