Earth Occultation Imaging Applied to BATSE -- Application to a Combined BATSE-GBM Survey of the Hard X-Ray Sky

TL;DR

This paper presents an Earth Occultation Imaging method applied to BATSE data to identify and catalog hard X-ray sources, including previously uncatalogued sources, and compares the results with the GBM survey.

Contribution

It introduces an imaging approach for Earth Occultation analysis that uncovers new X-ray sources beyond existing catalogs.

Findings

Identified 15 known sources and 17 new sources.

Expanded BATSE catalog with additional sources.

Compared BATSE results with ongoing GBM survey.

Abstract

A combined BATSE-GBM hard X-ray catalog is presented based on Earth Occultation Imaging applied to a reanalysis of BATSE data. An imaging approach has been developed for the reanalysis of Earth Occultation analysis of BATSE data. The standard occultation analysis depends on a predetermined catalog of potential sources, so that a real source not present in the catalog may induce systematic errors when source counts associated with an uncatalogued source are incorrectly attributed to catalog sources. The goal of the imaging analysis is to find a complete set of hard X-ray sources, including sources not in the original BATSE occultation catalog. Using the imaging technique, we have identified 15 known sources and 17 unidentified sources and added them to the BATSE occultation catalog. The resulting expanded BATSE catalog of sources observed during 1991-2000 is compared to the ongoing GBM survey.