IBIS performances during the Galactic Plane Scan: I. The Cygnus region

Abstract

The Plane of our Galaxy is regularly observed by the INTEGRAL satellite by means of scheduled scans. We present here results from the IBIS/ISGRI instrument using data from the first two Galactic Plane Scans performed at the end of the Performance Verification phase, while INTEGRAL was pointed towards the Cygnus region. Considering the predicted IBIS sensitivity, we expected three persistent sources to be detectable: Cyg X-1, Cyg X-3, Cyg X-2, in order of decreasing intensity in the hard-X energy range (>15 keV). In addition to these sources, our analysis revealed two more transient sources, confirming the unprecedented IBIS sensitivity. For each exposure (∼2200 s) of the two scans, we report on detected source fluxes, variabilities and localisation accuracies.