• → European Space Agency

    • About Science & Technology

    • For Public

    • For Educators

    • ESA

    • Science & Technology

    • INTEGRAL

    • Missions
    • Show All Missions
    • Mission Home
    • Summary
    • Fact Sheet
    • Objectives
    • Mission Team
    • Orbit View
    • Spacecraft
    • Spacecraft
    • 3D Model
    • Instruments
    • Mission Operations
    • Mission Operations
    • Launch Vehicle
    • Launch Campaign
    • Orbit/Navigation
    • Science Operations
    • ISDC
    • ISOC
    • Data Archive (ESA)
    • Data Archive (ISDC)
    • Resources
    • News Archive
    • Multimedia Gallery
    • Publication Archive
    • Calendar of Events
    • Services
    • Contact Us
    • Subscribe
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Bookmark and Share

    SPI observations of the diffuse 60Fe emission in the Galaxy

    Publication date: 30 Apr 2007

    Authors: Wang, W. et al.

    Journal: to appear in A&A
    arXiv:0704.3895v1 [astro-ph]
    Year: 2007

    Gamma-ray line emission from radioactive decay of 60Fe provides constraints on nucleosynthesis in massive stars and supernovae. The spectrometer SPI on board INTEGRAL has accumulated nearly three years of data on gamma-ray emission from the Galactic plane. We have analyzed these data with suitable instrumental-background models and sky distributions to produce high-resolution spectra of Galactic emission. We detect the gamma-ray lines from 60Fe decay at 1173 and 1333 keV, obtaining an improvement over our earlier measurement of both lines with now 4.9 sigma significance for the combination of the two lines. The average flux per line is (4.4 +- 0.9) x 10-5 ph cm-2 s-1 rad-1 for the inner Galaxy region. Deriving the Galactic 26Al gamma-ray line flux with using the same set of observations and analysis method, we determine the flux ratio of 60Fe/26Al gamma-rays as 0.148 +- 0.06. The current theoretical predictions are still consistent with our result.

    Link to Publication

    Last Update: 25 Jun 2007

    • Shortcut URL
    • http://sci.esa.int/jump.cfm?oid=41137
    • See also
    • Detection of Galactic 60Fe gamma-ray line emission

    Connect with us

    • RSS
    • Youtube
    • Twitter
    • Flickr
    • Google Buzz
    • Livestream
    • Subscribe
    • App Store
    • ESA Science Twitter

    Follow ESA science

    • Copyright 2000 - 2013 © European Space Agency. All rights reserved.

    • Terms and Conditions