In this paper we report on the third soft gamma-ray source catalog obtained with the IBIS/ ISGRI gamma-ray imager on board the INTEGRAL satellite. The scientific data set is based on more than 40 Ms of high-quality observations performed during the first 3.5 yr of Core Program and public IBIS/ ISGRI observations. Compared to previous IBIS/ISGRI surveys, this catalog includes a substantially increased coverage of extragalactic fields, and comprises more than 400 high-energy sources detected in the energy range 17Y100 keV, including both transients and faint persistent objects that can only be revealed with longer exposure times.

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Fast X-ray Transients (FXTs) are believed to be non-recurrent bright X-ray sources lasting less than a day and occuring at serendipitous positions, they can best be detected and discovered by instruments having a sufficiently wide field of view and high sensitivity. The IBIS/ISGRI instrument onboard INTEGRAL is particularly suited to detect new or already known fast X-ray transient sources. We report on IBIS/ISGRI detection of newly discovered outbursts of three fast transient sources located at low Galactic latitude: SAX J1818.6−1703; IGR J16479−4514; IGR J17391−302/XTE J1739−302. The reported results confirm and strengthen the very fast transient nature of these sources, given that all their newly detected outbursts have a duration less than ∼3 h. Additionally, they provide the first evidence for a possible recurrent fast transient behaviour as all three sources were detected in outburst by ISGRI more than once during the last 2 years.

Pulsar systems accelerate particles to immense energies. The detailed functioning of these engines is still poorly understood, but polarization measurements of high-energy radiation may allow us to locate where the particles are accelerated. We have detected polarized gamma rays from the vicinity of the Crab pulsar using data from the spectrometer on the International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory satellite. Our results show polarization with an electric vector aligned with the spin axis of the neutron star, demonstrating that a substantial fraction of the high-energy electrons responsible for the polarized photons are produced in a highly ordered structure close to the pulsar.