The ASDC team is part of the Fermi-LAT collaboration and contributes to the project in a variety of ways including: 1) maintaining a copy of the LAT science data archive, with a locally developed interactive data preview , 2) providing data exploration and quick-look analysis software, 3) supporting the production of high-level data products, 4) participating to the LAT Collaboration instrument services and data analysis, and 5) supporting the production, publication and maintenance of gamma-ray source catalogs and related multifrequency data.
The following is a list of products and tools that have been recently implemented at ASDC.
An interactive version of a number of catalogs, some of which are available only at ASDC.
• The first Fermi LAT catalog of sources detected above 10 GeV during the first three years of mission (First Fermi hard source list 1FHL).
• The incremental list of Fermi-GBM solar flares containing LAT sun light-curves.
• The interactive version of the Fermi All-sky Variability Analysis (FAVA) source catalog.
• The incremental list of the published LAT AGN/blazars.
Monthly flux light curves (based on a likelihood analysis) of variable 2FGL sources are made available within the interactive 2FGL catalog. These data sets will be extended to a four-year period and published within the upcoming 3FGL catalog.
The FODA preview tool has been extended to include a task that calculates a preliminary flux-rate light-curve using the aperture photometry method.
The five-year birthday of the mission
June 11, 2013 was also the fifth year birthday since the launch of GLAST, which was renamed Fermi shortly afterward. In the first five years, 1130 refereed papers have used Fermi data or results, with a cumulative 26038 citations. The three most-cited are the Large Area Telescope (LAT) instrument paper, the first electron spectrum paper, and the first LAT source catalog. Ranked by citation count in astrophysics, Fermi papers (sometimes several) are in the top 10 in 2009, 2010, and 2012. Fermi results are clearly having a significant impact on current astrophysics and astro-particle physics. Many of these published results are made possible with data (and the work of scientists) from different multi-frequency domains. Among many examples, the Pulsar Search Consortium has timed over 700 pulsars in support of Fermi. Swift has followed up with X-ray and UV observations of hundreds of LAT flaring sources and dozens of LAT GRBs. Hundreds of Fermi-LAT sources are monitored in radio, X-ray and optical wavebands. Scientists working with Fermi, and the entire Fermi LAT team have received several prominent awards: the Bruno Rossi prize (twice), the Warner prize, the Panofsky prize and the Duggal Prize (also twice).
During the first five years about 300 billion LAT event triggers were collected, with about 1.8 billion events in the extended database and almost 270 million events in the gamma-ray photon database. While collecting high quality science data, the spacecraft has spent 96% of its observing time in survey mode, 3% in pointed mode, and the remainder in maneuver mode, with a total of 27537 orbits. Fermi has made over 90 autonomous repoints, 31 nadir observations and 12 targeted observations at 8 objects, 3 with modified rocking and 9 pointed mode observations.
In the current sixth year of the Fermi mission, the spacecraft and instruments are continuing to work well and the scientific output from the mission is continuing to increase, with a gamma-ray photon database approaching the 300 million events. The Fermi mission during the extended operations is expected to benefit of the new LAT Pass-8 data and analysis enhancing acceptance and resolution, and the opportunities for varied observation configurations.