APPARENT SPATIAL UNIFORMITY OF THE GAMMA-RAY BURSTS DETECTED BY THE KONUS EXPERIMENT ON VENERA-11 AND VENERA-12

We have applied the V/Vmax test to gamma-ray bursts of duration longer than 1 s recorded by the Konus experiment to examine quantitatively the uniformity of the burst source population. Based on a sample of 123 bursts detected on Venera 11 and Venera 12, we find 〈V/Vmax = 0.45 ± 0.03, consistent with 0.5, the value expected for a uniform distribution in space of the parent population of burst sources. We urge that experimenters give careful attention to the detection limit for each recorded gamma-ray burst and that quantitative data for burst properties and detection limits be published.