NOTE BY THE SUPERAGILE TEAM FOR A PROPER USE OF THE DATA CONTAINED IN THIS WEB PAGE

v.1.2 - 18 December 2008


This page contains the light curves of a set of X-ray sources as measured by the SuperAGILE
detector on the time scale of one satellite orbit (2-4000 s net exposure to the source). 
The data points are derived by an automated data processing running after every contact of 
the AGILE satellite with the Malindi ground station, approximately every 100 minutes.

The analysis performs a blind search of the sources detected in the relevant orbital
exposure. As such, it is not optimized for the individual sources, and the analyzed data 
set includes fractions of the orbit where the source was occulted by the Earth to the 
SuperAGILE experiment. This effect is taken into account by normalizing the counts to the 
true source exposure (e.g., "Exposure" column in the table), so that the flux measurement 
is less accurate but it is correct. More accurate flux measurements are possible but require 
dedicated analysis of the same data by the SuperAGILE Hardware Team.

The SuperAGILE detection of the individual sources in a field depends on the combination 
of their average intensity on the orbit and their position in the experiment field of view 
(i.e., the exposed effective area). The reported data points are extracted under the requirement
that the exposed area is no less than 20% of the on-axis value, on at least one of the
two experiment coordinates. 

Other sources detected by SuperAGILE with longer exposures or dedicated analysis are
not listed here. 

The values reported in the individual light curves are given in normalized counts, in units 
of counts/cm2/s, in the 20-60 keV energy range, each one integrated on a gross time interval 
of approximately 6000s (one satellite orbit). The normalized counts reported here are then 
independent of the source position in the experiment field of view. In the same energy range, 
the Crab nebula provides 0.15 counts/cm2/s. The flux uncertainty includes the statistical 
uncertainty and the systematics.  


The data provided in this page are meant to be in public distribution. Any user can then
make a scientific use of the light curves, without any restriction. In the automated data
processing a series of filters are in place to prevent unreliable flux measurements to be
distributed. However, taking into account the unmanned data processing, we strongly recommend 
the user to contact the SuperAGILE Hardware Team in case of unusual source behaviour, to verify 
its reliability.

The database accessed by this web page is updated twice a day with realtime data
and it covers the full time period following mid-july 2007.

The AGILE pointing plan is carried out by long exposures (from 2 to more than 4 weeks) to the same field. 
Therefore, the typical SuperAGILE data provide long coverages of the same sources, and long gaps for sources
in other fields. Each source is described by its name ("Target Name") and coordinates, with 
both Equatorial coordinates (RA, Dec) and Galactic coordinates. The "Flux", "Flux error",
"Detection Significance", "Exposure" and "Orbit number" of each source in the list correspond 
to the latest available observation by SuperAGILE. Next to the source name the link to plot and 
retrieve the light curve can be found.


For any questions please contact the SSDC Helpdesk or the SuperAGILE Team @ IASF-Rome.


If the SuperAGILE data are used in publications, the AGILE Team would greatly appreciate 
an acknowledgement of its efforts in making the experiment data public, by the following
sentence: "We acknowledge the use of public SuperAGILE light curves from the SSDC data archive."  


For details about the SuperAGILE experiment (pre-flight):
M. Feroci et al., "SuperAGILE. The hard X-ray imager for the AGILE space mission"
Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A 581 (2007) 728-754.