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COS-B Photon Events Catalog

Metadata Updated: September 19, 2025

The European Space Agency's satellite COS-B was dedicated to gamma-ray astronomy in the energy range 50 MeV to 5 Gev and carried a single spark chamber telescope with approximately a 20 degree field of view. COS-B operated in a highly eccentric polar orbit with apogee around 90000 km between 17 August 1975 and 25 April 1982. During this operational lifetime, COS-B made 65 observations, 15 of which were devoted to high (>20 deg) galactic latitudes. The COSBRAW database table is a log of the 65 COS-B observation intervals and contains target names, sky coordinates start times and other information taken from the final COS-B database produced by ESA in 1985. This final database consisted of three basic datasets: OBSLI, a dataset describing each observation period, typically a month; OURLI, a dataset describing each uninterrupted observation interval, lasting between 10 minutes and 10 hours; and GAMLI, a dataset containing records for each accepted gamma-ray photon. These three data sets were combined into FITS format images at NASA/GSFC. The images were formed by making the center pixel of a 1024 x 1024 pixel image correspond to the RA and DEC given in the OBSLI file. Each photon's RA and DEC was converted to a relative pixel in the image. This was done by using Aitoff projections. All the raw data from these three COS-B files are now stored in 65 FITS files accessible with BROWSE software in the database COSBRAW. The images can be accessed and plotted using XIMAGE and other columns of the FITS file extensions can be plotted with the FTOOL FPLOT. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025
Publisher High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center
Maintainer
Identifier ivo://nasa.heasarc/cosbraw
Data Last Modified 2025-09-10
Category Astrophysics
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 8bd413ae-1a9e-4d20-8b76-f7ef55d36f6e
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/all/cosbraw.html
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 8a26e5c79d49f15235a847c063d6eeb9d46fe7626d1cab2c98d0ac999e46205b
Source Schema Version 1.1

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