GRANAT/WATCH catalogue of cosmic gamma-ray bursts: December 1989 to September 1994^*

¹ Space Research Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Profsoyuznaya 84/32, 117810 Moscow, Russia
² Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik, Karl-Schwarzschildstr 1, 85740 Garching, Germany
³ Danish Space Research Institute, Juliane Maries Vej 30, DK 2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark
⁴ Los Alamos National Laboratory, MS D436, Los Alamos, NM 87545, U.S.A.
⁵ Laboratorio de astrofísica Espacial y Física Fundamental (LAEFF), INTA, P.O. Box 50727, 28080 Madrid, Spain

Send offprint request to: S.Y. Sazonov

Received: 23 May 1997
Accepted: 8 August 1997

Abstract

We present the catalogue of gamma-ray bursts (GRB) observed with the WATCH all-sky monitor on board the GRANAT satellite during the period December 1989 to September 1994. The cosmic origin of 95 bursts comprising the catalogue is confirmed either by their localization with WATCH or by their detection with other GRB experiments. For each burst its time history and information on its intensity in the two energy ranges  keV and  keV are presented. Most events show hardening of the energy spectrum near the burst peak. In part of the bursts an X-ray precursor or a tail is seen at  keV. We have determined the celestial positions of the sources of 47 bursts. Their localization regions (at confidence level) are equivalent in area to circles with radii ranging from 0.2 to 1.6 deg. The burst sources appear isotropically distributed on the sky on large angular scales.