  The Nuclear Compton Telescope (NCT) is a balloon-borne Compton telescope
designed for the study of astrophysical sources in the soft gamma-ray regime
(200 keV--20 MeV). NCT's ten high-purity germanium crossed-strip detectors
measure the deposited energies and three-dimensional positions of gamma-ray
interactions in the sensitive volume, and this information is used to restrict
the initial photon to a circle on the sky using the Compton scatter technique.
Thus NCT is able to perform spectroscopy, imaging, and polarization analysis on
soft gamma-ray sources. NCT is one of the next generation of Compton telescopes
--- so-called compact Compton telescopes (CCTs) --- which can achieve effective
areas comparable to COMPTEL's with an instrument that is a fraction of the
size. The Crab Nebula was the primary target for the second flight of the NCT
instrument, which occurred on 17--18 May 2009 in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.
Analysis of 29.3 ks of data from the flight reveals an image of the Crab at a
significance of 4-sigma. This is the first reported detection of an
astrophysical source by a CCT.
