The Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager observation of the 1809 keV line from Galactic 26Al

Abstract

Observations of the central radian of the Galaxy by the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopy Imager (RHESSI) have yielded a high-resolution measurement of the 1809 keV line from 26Al, detected at 11 sigma significance in nine months of data. The RHESSI result for the width of the cosmic line is 2.03 (+0.78, -1.21) keV FWHM. The best fit line width of 5.4 keV FWHM reported by Naya et al. (1996) using the Gamma-Ray Imaging Spectrometer (GRIS) balloon instrument is rejected with high confidence.

9 pages, 1 figure, accepted by The Astrophysical Journal Letters