Erik Kuulkers

ESA INTEGRAL Operations Scientist


I take part in the science operations team of INTEGRAL. My main
tasks are to take care of the long-term planning of INTEGRAL
observations, as well as to be the interface of the IBIS
instrument between the instrument PIs and the scientific community.

One of my current research projects is related to INTEGRAL. Our
Galactic bulge is a rich host of variable hard X-ray and gamma-ray
sources. These mainly comprise of low-mass and high-mass X-ray
binaries containing either a neutron star or black-hole. Since
February 2005 I have a program to monitor the source activity in
this region regularly and frequently with INTEGRAL. With a field
of view of about 15x15 degrees we monitor about ~100 sources every
INTEGRAL orbit (~3 days) for 3.5 hours, whenever the region is
visible.  As a service to the scientific community the X-ray and 
gamma-ray light curves and images are made available as soon as
possible after the observations have been performed. They are made
available from the INTEGRAL Science Data Center in Switzerland:
http://isdc.unige.ch/Science/BULGE/.

My other research interests include the study of thermo-nuclear 
explosions on neutron stars (called Type I X-ray bursts), as well
as binary parameters determinations of compact star systems.