Letter to the Editor

First results of IBIS/ISGRI Cygnus X-3 monitoring during INTEGRAL PV phase^*

CEA Saclay, DSM/DAPNIA/Service d'Astrophysique, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France

Corresponding author: P. Goldoni, pgoldoni@cea.fr

Received: 14 July 2003
Accepted: 10 September 2003

Abstract

We report on preliminary results of IBIS/ISGRI serendipitous observations of Cygnus X-3 in the 15–100 keV energy range during the INTEGRAL Performance and Verification phase. This peculiar microquasar was inside IBIS/ISGRI field of view at a ~9° distance from the pointing direction during Cygnus X-1 staring observations in November and December 2002. We analyzed observations from 27 November 2002 to 8 December 2002 with an effective on source exposure time of ~300 ks. Cyg X-3 was always significantly detected in the 15–40 and 40–100 keV energy bands during single exposures lasting between 30 min and one hour. The source light curve shows the characteristic 4.8-hour modulation with a shape consistent with a standard template. The two light curves' phase zero have no measurable offset and their values are consistent with historical ephemeris. These results show that even at this early stage of the mission, IBIS/ISGRI is capable of producing high quality scientific results on highly off axis, relatively bright targets.