Issue |
A&A
Volume 421, Number 3, July III 2004
|
|
---|---|---|
Page(s) | 983 - 990 | |
Section | Galactic structure, stellar clusters, and populations | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:20035671 | |
Published online | 29 June 2004 |
Spectral constraints on unidentified EGRET gamma-ray sources from COMPTEL MeV observations
1
Laboratory of Cosmic Ray and High Energy Astrophysics, Institute of High Energy Physics, PO Box 918-3, Beijing 100039, PR China
2
Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, PO Box 1603, 85740 Garching, Germany
3
SRON National Institute for Space Research, Sorbonnelaan 2, 3584 CA Utrecht, The Netherlands
4
Astronomical Institute “Anton Pannekoek”, University of Amsterdam, Kruislaan 403, 1098 SJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Corresponding author: W. Collmar, wec@mpe.mpg.de
Received:
13
November
2003
Accepted:
31
March
2004
We investigated the MeV properties of 173 unidentified or
tentatively identified EGRET sources listed in the third
EGRET catalogue by analyzing the simultaneously collected
COMPTEL MeV data for each individual source.
The sources can be divided into 4 groups. In this paper
we focus on one of these, a group of 22 EGRET sources for
which we can provide additional constraining information:
their spectral extrapolations from the energy range above 100 MeV
towards lower energies overshoot the fluxes or upper limits derived
simultaneously at MeV energies.
This means that for these sources a spectral turnover/break
between 1 MeV and 100 MeV is required.
At least two of these sources, but most likely
the majority of this sample, have the maxima of their
gamma-ray luminosities in this energy band.
The sources have rather soft EGRET spectra
(average photon index = 2.72),
and seem to spatially cluster in the inner Galaxy.
Variability analyses revealed 11 out of the 22 sources to be
significantly variable. Object classes proposed as possible counterparts for the unidentified
EGRET sources are discussed in the light of these additional constraints.
Key words: γ-rays: observations
© ESO, 2004
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.