Galactic Plane Survey

This program will be a path finder for new source classes in the Galaxy and will concentrate on the first quadrant of the Galactic plane (i.e., $0^{\circ} < l_{II} < 90^{\circ}$) spanning Galactic longitudes of $\vert b_{II}\vert \leq 2^{\circ}$ at full sensitivity. The visibility of the Galactic plane restricts observations to no more than 4 months per year so the entire survey will require 3 years to complete. The portion of sky surveyed will include 19 young, energetic pulsars, 12 unidentified EGRET sources, numerous supernova remnants of varying ages, several X-ray binaries, and at least one Galactic microquasar. The full 360 square degree survey will be carried out by observing each imaging location several times to maximize the coverage of potentially variable sources and to permit variability studies of the brightest sources. During the survey, time will be allocated to follow-up any new or possible source detections.