Three years of Fermi GBM earth occultation monitoring: Observations of hard X-ray/soft gamma-ray sources

The Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) on board Fermi has been providing continuous data to the astronomical community since 2008 August 12. In this paper, we present the results of the analysis of the first three years of these continuous data using the Earth occultation technique to monitor a catalog of 209 sources. From this catalog, we detect 99 sources, including 40 low-mass X-ray binary/neutron star systems, 31 high-mass X-ray binary/neutron star systems, 12 black hole binaries, 12 active galaxies, and 2 other sources, plus the Crab Nebula, and the Sun. Nine of these sources are detected in the 100-300keV band, including seven black hole binaries, the active galaxy CenA, and the Crab. The Crab and CygX-1 are also detected in the 300-500keV band. GBM provides complementary data to other sky-monitors below 100keV and is the only all-sky monitor above 100keV. Up-to-date light curves for all of the catalog sources can be found online. © © 2012. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved