The eROSITA telescope, launched in July 2019, has just completed its first survey.
For several months, the E Rosetta telescope on the Spektr-RG Space Observatory surveyed the entire sky and collected observations of the deepest survey of the sky using X-ray wavelengths.
A completely different sky
Now, all of this data has been collected on a map containing more than a million bright X-ray bodies, nearly doubling the number of these objects, collected over 60 years of astronomy using X-rays.
"This image of heaven completely changes the way we look at the active universe," said astrophysicist Peter Priddle, senior researcher at e Rosita from the Max Planet Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MBE). Details .. The beauty of the photos is really amazing. "
Most astronomical objects emit X-rays, but in different proportions to other wavelengths.
X-rays are known to have very short wavelengths, and are therefore very high energy, emitted from hotter and more vital objects, such as black holes, neutron stars, star galaxies, and supernova remnants.
X-rays are not visible to the naked human eye, such as radio waves. So, the x-ray sky looks very different from what we see when we look up at night.
Data 182 days
Additionally, unlike radio waves, X-rays are often blocked by the Earth's atmosphere, so the only way we can study them is to send telescopes into space.
A number of X-ray telescopes have been published, but the last X-ray of all sky was conducted decades ago, from 1990 to 1999, by the ROSAT satellite.
The e Rosita team says the new sky map compiled by the German-Russian telescope is four times deeper than the map extracted from Rossat's data.
It was hard work, as the telescope collected 182 days of data, and each exposure took between 150 and 200 seconds, for a total of 165 GB. Every day, the team was calling the satellite to link what they collected. Then all this raw data had to be processed and collected.
The first map
"We were all anxiously awaiting the first map of all the sky from e Rosetta," says astrophysicist Mara Salvato from the Max Planck Institute.
"The large sky regions have already been covered with other wavelengths, and we now have x-ray data to match. We need these other surveys to identify x-ray sources and understand their nature."
Most of the sources on the map - about 77% - are supermassive black holes that actively accumulate on materials in the core of galaxies, or what we call the active galaxy nuclei.
There are also groups of galaxies that glow in the X-ray due to the hot gas which is hampered by their collective attractiveness, and these constitute about 2% of the organisms.
Other things are much closer to our planet. Within the Milky Way, stars with a hot active wreath magnetically form 20% of objects.
This is just the beginning
The remainder is made up of a variety (bright x-ray diodes, supernova remnants, and flares) such as those emitted by stars torn by black holes.
The map also reveals the structure of hot gas within the Milky Way, and the gas that surrounds it. It is a wealth of data that opens our insights into the world of X-rays. It is just the beginning.
Over the next few years, the Observatory will conduct seven more surveys, the data of which will be collected to form a comprehensive and more sensitive sky map.
"With a million sources in just six months, the E Rosetta telescope has already revolutionized x-ray astronomy, but this is just a teaser of what will happen," says astrophysicist Kerbal Nandra of the Max Planck Institute.