Reassessing the BATSE Catalogue of Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes

Terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs) are bursts of gamma-ray flashes that last up to a millisecond and are observed by a spacecraft within a few hundred kilometers of the source of the gamma-ray. Since TGFs were discovered by the Burst and Transient Source Experiment (BATSE) on NASA's Compton Gamma-ray Observatory (CGRO) in the 1990s, other observations have increased our knowledge of TGFs (Fisherman et al., 1994). This improved understanding includes characteristics such as the distributions of geographic locations, pulse durations, pulse shapes, and pulse multiplicities. Using this post-BATSE knowledge, we reassessed the BATSE TGF catalogue (http://gammaray.nsstc.nasa.gov/batse/tgf/). Some BATSE triggers have features that can easily identify the trigger as a TGF, while others display different features that are unusual for TGFs. The BATSE triggers of the TGF catalogue were classified into five categories: TGFs, Terrestrial Electron Beams (TEBs), unusual TGFs, uncertain due to insufficient data, and TEB candidates. The triggers with unusual features will be further investigated. A table of our classifications and comments will be added to the online catalogue.