Maximum Likelihood Method Applied to COMPTEL Source Recognition and Analysis

As the instrumental resolution of high-energy astronomical experiments increases, the observer is confronted with a ’space of outcomes’ (hereafter dataspace) with at most a few events per bin (particularly if time resolution comes into play). This implies that the sought signal is not only contaminated by additive noise components (e.g. instrumental, earth’s atmosphere), but is also masked by relatively large intrinsic statistical fluctuations. In the case of the 1–30 MeV imaging telescope COMPTEL, the number of counts per bin is of the order 1, if the full resolution is to be explored.