Compton Gamma Ray Observatory Status Report #195 Monday, August 12, 1996 Questions or comments can be sent to Chris Shrader at the CGRO-SSC. Phone: 301/286-8434 e-mail: shrader@grossc.gsfc.nasa.gov Guest Investigator News: The CGRO Timeline committee met in late July to determine the Cycle-6 Viewing Plan. The plan has now undergone constraint checking and review and it will be posted on the CGRO SSC WWW page shortly, as will a detailed summary of accepted proposals and all on- and off-axis GI targets. About 95% of the GI notification letters have been sent out and the remainder will be sent shortly. Thanks again to all of you who proposed for your continuued interest in the program. EGRET The high voltage for the track imaging system of EGRET was reactivated on July 30, 1996. It had been off since June 14, 1996 to conserve the remaining gas, since the astrophysical objects in the field of view were judged by the proposal review committee to be of lesser priority. Delivery of the final phase 4 data to the GRO SSC is on schedule, and delivery of the phase 5 preliminary data to the GRO SSC is also on schedule. Interaction with guest investigators continues at a good level. A paper entitled "EGRET High-Energy Gamma-Ray Pulsar Studies. III A Survey" by Nel et al. appeared in the Astrophysical Journal, 465, 898 (1996) and a paper entitled "EGRET Observations of High-Energy Gamma Radiation from PSR B1706-44" appeared in the Astrophysical Journal, 465, 385 (1996). Also, all of the EGRET Instrument Science Team papers presented at the Third Compton Symposium are now available in preprint form. In case that you missed previous announcements, information on EGRET is now available on the World Wide Web. You may access it through: http://lheawww.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/gamcosray/EGRET/egret.html Currently, the EGRET telescope is pointed at Geminga and will move to the Crab on August 13, 1996. OSSE We continue to prepare for the Fourth Compton Observatory Symposium to be held in Williamsburg VA on 27-30 April 1997. For more information, contact Jim Kurfess (kurfess@osse.nrl.navy.mil) or check the Symposium home page at URL http://osse-www.nrl.navy.mil/cgrosymp.htm. OSSE operations are normal. The instrument is working as designed, with all subsystems in complete and full operation. The slewing response to BATSE burst triggers was disabled on 96/213 as part of our engineering tests on the Crab in the current viewing period. It should be restarted on 96/233. A number of preprints and reprints of recent OSSE results have just been mailed. Preprints are also available on the OSSE WWW page at URL http://osse-www.nrl.navy.mil/osselib.htm. Recent observations are listed in the following table. View period Dates Target (owner) 524 9-23 July GX 339-4 (E. Liang) Vela Pulsar (A. Harding) 525 23-30 July Vela Pulsar (A. Harding) PKS 2155-304 (public) NGC 7172 (public) NGC 7213 (public) 526 30 July - 13 Aug Crab Pulsar (PI team) IC 4329A (PI team) NGC 2992 (public) Low-level OSSE data products through viewing period 415 and high-level data products through viewing period 220 have been delivered to the Compton GRO Science Support Center archive. In addition, by special request all subsequent public Cyg X-1 data sets, both low and high level, have been delivered. Refer to the CGRO-SSC page on the WWW (http://cossc.gsfc.nasa.gov), or contact Tom Bridgman (bridgman@grossc.gsfc.nasa.gov) for more information. COMPTEL The COMPTEL instrument is performing well and continues routine operations. The Sun was within the field of view of COMPTEL on 9 July 1996, when the active region AR-7978 produced a rare (during this period of minimal solar activity), powerful X2.9-class flare. COMPTEL obtained gamma-ray light curves of this event in three operational modes of the instrument (double-scatter telescope, and high- and low-energy burst detectors). Preliminary spectral results show a number of nuclear emission lines, for which detailed analysis is in progress. A general team meeting of the collaboration was held during the week of 23-26 July at MPE in Garching, Germany. At the recent COSPAR meeting in Birmingham, England, members of the collaboration presented recent research results on the topics of pulsars (Hermsen et al.), gamma-ray bursts (Kippen et al.), and neutron albedo measurements with COMPTEL (Morris et al., and Weidenspointner et al.). Lastly, though losing the 83rd Tour de France to the valiant Dane, Bjarne Riis, the previously unbeatable Indurain achieved some measure of vindication by winning Olympic gold in the inaugural cycling time-trial event in Atlanta. BATSE The following was reported in IAU circular 6432: 2S 1417-624 M. H. Finger and M. Scott, Universities Space Research Association; T. A. Prince and B. Vaughan, California Institute of Technology; and R. B. Wilson, Marshall Space Flight Center, NASA, report for the Compton Observatory BATSE team: "Renewed activity from the x-ray-transient pulsar 2S 1417-624 is being observed. Hard x-ray pulses were first detected on June 30, with the pulsed flux rising to 17 +/- 3 mCrab (20-50 keV) by July 8. A barycentric frequency of 0.05694816(25) Hz on July 4.5 UT and barycentric frequency rate of 3.35(14) x 10E-11 Hz/s were obtained from a fit of frequency measurements from July 1-8. The source had been undetected by BATSE since a series of six outbursts were observed, beginning on 1994 Aug. 26 (IAUC 6075) and ending 1995 July 8." The following was reported in IAU circular 6436: GRO J1655-40 AND GRS 1915+105 B. A. Harmon, C. A. Wilson, M. McCollough, S. N. Zhang, W. S. Paciesas, and C. R. Robinson report for the BATSE Compton Observatory Science Team: "The two superluminal jet sources GRO J1655-40 and GRS 1915+105 are both being detected strongly in hard x-rays by BATSE. GRO J1655-40 was first detected in late May 1996, but has gradually increased in brightness to an average around 0.6 Crab (20-100 keV) beginning about July 1. Occasional daily averages reach 0.9 Crab. The spectrum is similar to that of previous outbursts, exhibiting a power law shape to 200 keV with photon indices of -2.3 to -2.6. GRS 1915+105 has also become active again in hard x-rays, and is undergoing a moderately bright outburst (about 200 mCrab in the band 20-100 keV) which began around July 4. This precedes the increased radio flux by about 5 days (IAUC 6432). Recent increases in hard x-ray flux (around June 21 and July 4 onward) have been accompanied by spectral softening. The spectrum, adequately fit by a power law, has a spectral index varying between -2.4 and -3.4." During the last month the following pulsed sources have been detected by the BATSE pulsed source monitor: Her X-1, Cen X-3, 4U 1626-67, 2S 1417-624, EX 02030+375, OAO 1657-415, GX 1+4, Vela X-1, and GX 301-2. The burst trigger is currently using count rates for events above 100 keV. As of August 7 BATSE has detected 1622 gamma-ray bursts out of a total of 5462 on-board triggers in 1933 days of operation. There have been 768 triggers due to solar flares, 10 due to SGR events, 55 due to terrestrial gamma-ray flashes, and 1477 due to the bursting pulsar GRO J1744-28.