COS-B gamma ray sources beyond the predicted diffuse emission

Abstract

COS-B data were reanalyzed using for background subtraction the modeled galactic diffuse gamma-ray emission based on HI- and CO-line surveys and the gamma-ray data itself. A methodology was developed for this purpose with the following three features: automatic generation of source catalogs using correlation analysis, simulation of trials to derive significance thresholds for source detection, and bootstrap sampling to drive error boxes and confidence intervals for source parameters. The analysis shows that about half of the 2CG sources are explained by concentrations in the distribution of molecular hydrogen. Indication for a few weak new sources is also obtained.