Gamma-rays from radioactive 26Al (half-life approximately 7.2 x 10(5) years) provide a 'snapshot' view of continuing nucleosynthesis in the Galaxy. The Galaxy is relatively transparent to such gamma-rays, and emission has been found concentrated along its plane. This led to the conclusion that massive stars throughout the Galaxy dominate the production of 26Al. On the other hand, meteoritic data show evidence for locally produced 26Al, perhaps from spallation reactions in the protosolar disk. Furthermore, prominent gamma-ray emission from the Cygnus region suggests that a substantial fraction of Galactic 26Al could originate in localized star-forming regions. Here we report high spectral resolution measurements of 26Al emission at 1808.65 keV, which demonstrate that the 26Al source regions corotate with the Galaxy, supporting its Galaxy-wide origin. We determine a present-day equilibrium mass of 2.8 (+/- 0.8) solar masses of 26Al. We use this to determine that the frequency of core collapse (that is, type Ib/c and type II) supernovae is 1.9 (+/- 1.1) events per century.

Aims. Gamma-ray line emission from the radioactive decay of 26 Al reflects nucleosynthesis in massive stars and supernovae. We use INTEGRAL 26 Al measurements to characterize the distribution and characteristics of 26 Al source regions throughout the Galaxy. Methods. The spectrometer SPI aboard INTEGRAL has accumulated over five years of data on 26 Al gamma-ray emission from the Galactic plane. We analyzed these data using suitable instrumental-background models and adopted sky distribution models to produce high-resolution 26 Al spectra of Galactic emission, spatially resolved along the Galaxy plane. Results. We detect the 26 Al line from the inner Galaxy at ∼28σ significance. The line appears narrow, and we constrain broadening in the source regions to <1.3 keV (2σ). Different sky distribution models do not significantly affect those large-scale results. The 26 Al intensity for the inner Galaxy is derived as (2.9 ± 0.2) × 10 −4 ph cm −2 s −1 rad −1 , consistent with earlier results from COMPTEL and SPI data. This can be translated to an 26 Al mass of 2.7 ± 0.7 M in the Galaxy as a whole. The 26 Al intensity is also confirmed to be somewhat brighter in the 4th than in the 1st quadrant (ratio ∼1.3 ± 0.2).

Gamma-ray line emission from radioactive decay of 60Fe provides constraints on nucleosynthesis in massive stars and supernovae. The spectrometer SPI on board INTEGRAL has accumulated nearly three years of data on gamma-ray emission from the Galactic plane. We have analyzed these data with suitable instrumental-background models and sky distributions to produce high-resolution spectra of Galactic emission. We detect the gamma-ray lines from 60Fe decay at 1173 and 1333 keV, obtaining an improvement over our earlier measurement of both lines with now 4.9 sigma significance for the combination of the two lines. The average flux per line is (4.4 \pm 0.9) \times 10^{-5} ph cm^{-2} s^{-1} rad^{-1} for the inner Galaxy region. Deriving the Galactic 26Al gamma-ray line flux with using the same set of observations and analysis method, we determine the flux ratio of 60Fe/26Al gamma-rays as 0.148 \pm 0.06. The current theoretical predictions are still consistent with our result.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables, A&A in pres

The diffuse continuum emission from the Galactic plane in the energy range 18-1000 keV has been studied using 16 Ms of data from the SPI instrument on INTEGRAL. With such an exposure we can exploit the imaging properties of SPI to achieve a good separation of point sources from the various diffuse components. Using a candidate-source catalogue derived with IBIS on INTEGRAL and a number of sky distribution models we obtained spectra resolved in Galactic longitude. We can identify spectral components of a diffuse continuum of power law shape with index about 1.7, a positron annihilation component with a continuum from positronium and the line at 511 keV, and a second, roughly power-law component from detected point sources. Our analysis confirms the concentration of positron annihilation emission in the inner region (|l| < 10• ), the disk (10 • < |l| < 30• ) being at least a factor 7 weaker in this emission. The power-law component in contrast drops by only a factor 2, showing a quite different longitude distribution and spatial origin. Detectable sources constitute about 90% of the total Galactic emission between 20 and 60 keV, but have a steeper spectrum than the diffuse emission, their contribution to the total emission dropping rapidly to a small fraction at higher energies. The spectrum of diffuse emission is compatible with RXTE and COMPTEL at lower and higher energies respectively. In the SPI energy range the flux is lower than found by OSSE, probably due to the more complete accounting for sources by SPI. The power-law emission is difficult to explain as of interstellar origin, inverse Compton giving at most 10%, and instead a population of unresolved point sources is proposed as a possible origin, AXPs with their spectral hardening above 100 keV being plausible candidates. We present a broadband spectrum of the Galactic emission from 10 keV to 100 GeV.