INTernational Gamma Ray Laboratory (INTEGRAL)

• Forschungsstelle: SBFI
• Projektnummer: P2022-UniGE-INTEGRAL SDC

Schlüsselwörter (Französisch)

Astronomie, Astrophysique, Satellites d'observation de la Terre, ESA, ISDC, Infrastructures de recherches spatiales, Espace, Space Research & Planetary Sciences

Kurzbeschreibung (Englisch)

The INTEGRAL Science Data Centre (ISDC) processes the telemetry stream from the INTEGRAL spacecraft in both Near Real Time (NRT) and Consolidated (CONS) versions into a widely usable format. The former is inspected in a quick-look analysis to assess the data quality and discover
transient astronomical events; afterwards, it is distributed to the observers. The latter is stored in the ISDC archive, the only source of publicly accessible mission data and also distributed to guest observers. ISDC has the task to integrate and distribute the Software for the Oine Analysis
(OSA) together with the handbooks and give support to the users. Without the ISDC contribution, INTEGRAL data cannot be used by the astronomical community.
The ISDC project started well before the launch in 1995, and continued to operate with a peak of international collaborators around the date of launch in late 2002. Since then, ISDC has undergone a deep renovation over the years with a signi cant reduction of the Swiss-funded manpower (about a factor four over the years), while maintaining a high level of reliability. This has been achieved owing to the system robustness, by accurate documentation, preserving expert sta , which is shared with other projects,and formation of a few new collaborators.

Projektziele (Englisch)

The objective of this proposal is to continue the ISDC operations in 2022.

Currently, and for almost ten years, INTEGRAL data arrive in real time for more than 98% of the time at the ISDC, where they are received, processed, analyzed, and immediately distributed to the community. A scientifc validation of data is performed and relevant hot" discoveries are reported promptly through astronomer's telegrams and circulars in collaboration with the guest observers. A search for gamma-ray bursts is routinely performed by an automatic system (IBAS), which sends automatic alerts to robotic telescopes within second from the discovery. IBAS is maintained by the ISDC team in collaboration with the developers. ISDC has also implemented an automatic triggered analysis of every alert received regarding gravitational wave, neutrino, or gamma-ray bursts, so that data are scanned for serendipitous gamma-ray signals. An international team of scientists on duty has been formed to send prompt communications (GCN circulars) after human checks.