Fermi Catalogs Facilitate Science

Astronomical catalogs provide a starting point for research, as shown in the box to the right. Because the Fermi instruments survey the sky continuously, they are ideally suited to producing both general and specialized catalogs.

The Fermi Science Support Center makes these catalogs available. See: http://fermi.gsfc.nasa.gov/ssc/data/access/

Ways in Which Catalogs Enable Scientific Research

Discovery - unassociated sources are either previously unknown members of known source classes or something entirely new
Population Studies - properties of whole classes of sources, such as their luminosity functions
Correlated Variability Studies - compare activity in the gamma-ray band with multiwavelength observations; also ultra high-energy cosmic rays/high-energy neutrinos/gravitational waves
Source Sample - to probe the Extragalactic Background Light/Inter-Galactic Magnetic Field
Contribution - of Active Galactic Nuclei to the extragalactic diffuse gamma-ray background

The Third Fermi LAT Source Catalog (3FGL)

The 3FGL catalog contains 3033 gamma-ray sources seen by the LAT at energies above 100 MeV.

The 3FGL catalog, shown above in Galactic coordinates, contains 3033 gamma-ray sources seen by Fermi's Large Area Telescope at energies above 100 MeV. The table below shows the demographics of the high-energy gamma-ray sky. The LAT catalog defines firmly identified sources as those recognized by spatial morphology, periodicity, or correlated variability with other wavelengths. The associated sources are statistically related to known objects based primarily on sky location. + Learn More

* Includes binaries, nova, globular clusters, and star-forming regions
Type	# Identified	# Associated
Pulsars	143	24
Pulsar Wind Nebulae (PWNe)	9	2
Supernova Remnants (SNRs)	12	11
Candidate SNR/PWNe	--	49
Quasars (steep and soft spectrum)	0	4
BL Lac Blazars	18	642
Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars	38	446
Other Active Galactic Nuclei	10	587
Normal & Starburst Galaxies	2	5
Other*	6	15
Totals	238	1785
Unassociated	--	1010

The Second Fermi GBM Gamma-ray Burst Catalog

The Second GBM gamma-ray burst catalog contains 953 gamma-ray bursts.

The Second GBM gamma-ray burst catalog, shown above in Celestial coordinates, contains 953 gamma-ray bursts. Long bursts have duration greater than 2 second; short bursts have duration less than 2 seconds.

There is also a table of GRBs that have high-energy components detected by the LAT. This table is kept up-to-date by the LAT instrument team.

Wide Variety of Specialized Catalogs

In addition to all-sky catalogs, the instrument teams have performed more specialized analyses, focusing on specific source classes and using careful, systematic treatment of all the class members. As a result there are several publicly-available catalogs that are useful for studies of both individual sources as well as entires source populations.

First High-Energy Gamma-Ray Source Catalog: An all-sky catalog tuned to detect only gamma-ray sources that are significant above 10 GeV.
Second High-Energy Gamma-Ray Source Catalog: An all-sky catalog tuned to detect only sources that are significant above 50 GeV.
Catalog of Gamma-Ray Pulsars: A catalog that uses timing information for known gamma-ray pulsars to perform analyses of both the ON and OFF pulse data. This provides much better characterization of the pulsar spectral properties, and can be used to search for underlying pulsar wind nebulae.
Catalog of Gamma-Ray Supernova Remnants: This catalog reports the result of a systematic gamma-ray analysis performed at the positions of all known supernova remnants.