AMON receives Swift Cycle 12 Award

Swift satellite. Image from http://swift.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Congratulations to Azadeh Keivani and the AMON team for a successful Swift Cycle 12 guest investigator proposal! The proposal, “Seeking the sources of the highest-energy IceCube neutrinos with Swift,” provides Keivani and her co-investigators access to Swift observing time.  Each time IceCube detects a track-like High-Energy Starting Event, which has a high probability of having a cosmic origin, it triggers AMON, which in turn alerts Swift to repoint and follow-up the direction of the neutrino’s arrival, to investigate whether there is evidence of X-ray activity. It is expected that, on average, two such alerts will be issued by AMON every year. The award also comes with funding to enable the analysis of the data acquired with Swift. The AMON members that are investigators in this proposal are Azadeh Keivani (PI), Doug Cowen, Phil Evans, Derek Fox, Jamie Kennea, Julian Osborne, Miles Smith, and Gordana Tešić.