1420005

For as long as X-ray astronomy exists X-ray (and gamma-ray) astronomers consider the Crab supernova remnant to be a steady standard candle suitable as a calibration source. INTEGRAL has been observing the Crab for mainly calibration purposes only about twice per year for a total of about 4 revolutions per AO up to AO-11. Further observations have been sparse and only every now and then it was in the field of view during a few ad-hoc observations of relatively nearby sources. In AO-11 we started a program to monitor the Crab more frequently on a regular basis. We propose to continue this project. The objectives are two-fold: 1) monitor and seek for accompanying flares which have been seen at $>$100MeV by Fermi and AGILE 2) improve on the (cross-) calibration of the INTEGRAL instruments as well as with other high-energy instruments. We propose to look at the Crab every 4th revolution with a single standard 5x5 pattern for 45 ksec. The data will be made public immediately. [truncated! Please see actual data for full text]