As of: February 5, 2024, 12:47 p.m
By: Lennart Schwenck
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The eRosita telescope reveals impressive X-ray data with a look into the depths of the universe.
It shows the entire Western Galactic Hemisphere.
Garching - The eRosita consortium has published the first catalog (eRASS1) of its All-Sky Survey with around 900,000 identified X-ray sources.
In its first six months, eRosita discovered more X-ray sources than ever before in the history of X-ray astronomy, accompanied by scientific publications on topics such as planetary habitability and the discovery of large cosmic structures.
Half of the entire sky was searched with the eRosita telescope
Andrea Merloni, lead scientist at eRosita, emphasizes the importance of these numbers in a press release from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics: “We have discovered more sources in six months than the large flagship missions XMM-Newton and Chandra in almost 25 years .”
eROSITA telescope: What is it actually?
eROSITA, the main instrument of the Russian-German “Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma” (SRG) mission, is carrying out the first all-sky imaging survey in the medium X-ray range (up to 10 keV).
Launched in 2019, the telescope's primary goals include discovering the hot intergalactic medium in galaxy clusters, systematically identifying obscured (and suspected) black holes, and studying the physics of galactic X-ray source populations.
The telescope consists of seven mirror modules with a novel detector system developed by MPE and based on XMM-Newton pn-CCD technology.
Source:
Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics
Half of the entire sky was searched in sensitive energy ranges, and the telescope discovered an incredible record number of over 170 million X-ray photons.
This data allows a look not only at X-ray sources, but also at the energy they emit.
This image shows half of the X-ray sky projected onto a circle (called the Zenith Equal Area Projection) with the center of the Milky Way on the left and the galactic plane horizontal.
The photons were color-coded according to their energy.
© MPE, J. Sanders for the eROSITA consortium
In total, the catalog contains around 710,000 supermassive black holes, 180,000 active stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way, 12,000 galaxy clusters and a variety of other fascinating objects.
To understand: A galaxy cluster, also called a cluster, contains several thousand galaxies.
The Milky Way alone contains more than a hundred billion stars.
And the star that is closest to Earth is what we call the Sun.
eRosita x-rays the universe: more than 1000 superclusters of galaxies
The eRASS1 observations are not only a treasure trove of data for astronomers, but also open up new opportunities for the scientific community.
Almost 50 scientific publications were submitted at the same time as the data release.
This work spans a wide range, from the identification of new cosmic structures to the discovery of “quasi-periodically erupting” black holes to research into the influence of X-rays from stars on planetary atmospheres and their water content.
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The new findings about the eRosita sky are particularly impressive.
An animation shows how the telescope viewed the X-ray sky.
The color coding represents different energy ranges, highlighting different X-ray sources.
eROSITA X-ray image showing the newly discovered filament (thread-like connections of visible and dark matter) between two galaxy clusters.
The distribution of galaxies (white contours, top left), as seen in the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), follows the structure of the filament.
In the SLOW simulation, tailored to reproduce the key features of the Local Universe, this individual system with the two galaxy clusters and the filament ridge is also reproduced.
© MPE, J. Sanders for the eROSITA consortium
Exploding Stars, Black Holes, and Alien Galaxies: A New Era in X-ray Astronomy
The release of the data and publications marks a turning point for X-ray astronomy.
Miriam Ramos-Ceja, head of the eRosita Operations Team: “We hope that this will allow even more scientists around the world to work with high-energy data and thus further push the boundaries of X-ray astronomy.”
Over 250 scientists in 12 working groups took part in this project, and the scope of their results is enormous.
In addition to the catalog and scientific findings, the consortium has also published images of the X-ray sky at various energies and the necessary software for comprehensive analysis.
This X-ray image shows the entire extent of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster, the closest galaxy cluster (collection of galaxies) to us.
The bright white spot in the center is the central galaxy M87 (known from the image of the supermassive black hole observed with the Event Horizon Telescope).
The hazy white glow around M87 is the very hot gas between the galaxies.
It extends further in some directions than others and is not circular, suggesting that the Virgo cluster of galaxies is still forming.
The colorful stripe at bottom left comes from foreground emissions within our own galaxy and is known as one of the eROSITA bubbles.
© MPE, J. Sanders for the eROSITA consortium
The eRosita team has also expanded the catalog with measurements from other telescopes at different wavelengths to provide a complete picture of the universe.
Now it is in the hands of researchers worldwide to sift through the published data and gain new insights into the universe.
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