The INTEGRAL mission

The ESA observatory INTEGRAL (International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory) is dedicated to the fine spectroscopy (2.5 keV FWHM @ 1 MeV) and fine imaging (angular resolution: 12 arcmin FWHM) of celestial gamma-ray sources in the energy range 15 keV to 10 MeV with concurrent source monitoring in the X-ray (3-35 keV) and optical (Vband, 550 nm) energy ranges. INTEGRAL carries two main gamma-ray instruments, the spectrometer SPI (Vedrenne et al. 2003) -optimized for the high-resolution gamma-ray line spectroscopy (20 keV-8 MeV), and the imager IBIS (Ubertini et al. 2003) -optimized for high-angular resolution imaging (15 keV-10 MeV). Two monitors, JEM-X (Lund et al. 2003) in the (3-35) keV X-ray band, and OMC…