ROSCOSMOS & DLR - Spektr-RG x-ray telescope patch.
April 1, 2020
The work of astrophysicists from Russia and Germany is a significant event - X-ray maps of half the sky were constructed according to the data of the ART-XC (IKI RAS, Russia) and eROSITA (MPE, Germany) telescopes installed on board the Russian Spektr-RG astrophysical observatory. The total area of the celestial sphere is 41 thousand 253 square degrees. By March 29, 2020, the eROSITA telescope had built an X-ray map covering 20 thousand 637 square degrees.
On the map of a quarter of the sky, for the processing and analysis of which Russian astrophysicists are responsible, more than 125 thousand X-ray sources have been detected. Among them are tens of thousands of nuclei of active galaxies and quasars, the radiation of which is associated with accretion (falling) of matter onto supermassive black holes, and several thousand massive clusters of galaxies filled with mysterious dark matter.
“It's amazing how much information this card contains! - says the scientific director of the mission, academician Rashid Sunyaev. “We see on it tens of thousands of stars with active coronas that are much brighter in x-rays than the sun, remnants of supernova explosions, pulsars, accreting white dwarfs, and many other types of galactic sources of x-ray radiation. Many of these objects are observed for the first time.
Unfortunately, we physically cannot display the position and brightness of all detected sources on the map - there are too many of them, they merge for the viewer. We need a room of enormous size, so that we can put there such a detailed map. But their brightness and position in the sky are measured with good accuracy. For example, the position of most detected x-ray sources in the sky is now known with an accuracy better than ten arc seconds. This allows us to identify part of the discovered objects with sources that were already known in the optical or infrared ranges of the spectrum. ”
Spektr-RG x-ray telescope
On the resulting map, the Northern polar hole is the most striking and the longest in the soft X-rays region of the Milky Way galaxy. The nature of this object remains an unresolved issue, although several hypotheses are being discussed. In addition, a dark strip is clearly visible, stretching along and slightly above the plane of our Galaxy, where the surface brightness of x-ray radiation is less than in other parts of the map. This is due to the absorption of soft X-rays by gas and dust in this part of the Galaxy.
Telescopes of the Russian orbital observatory "Spectrum-RG" scan the sky along a large circle in the celestial sphere, the plane of which rotates approximately in accordance with the motion of the Earth around the Sun. All scans intersect at the poles of the ecliptic (plane of the solar system), where the x-ray map of the sky has the greatest sensitivity. The density of objects reaches 350 sources per square degree.
Scanning of the sky with telescopes at the Spectrum RG observatory continues. The enterprises of Roscosmos State Corporation are in charge of the apparatus, the long-range space communication antennas receive scientific data every day and send commands to scientific instruments. Scientists at the Space Research Institute remotely process scientific data on powerful computers in the project data center. A map in the opposite quarter of the sky is built by scientists from the German Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics of the Max Planck Society. Together, these two quarters make up half of the entire sky. It is planned that our first X-ray map of the entire sky will be obtained by the end of June 2020.
About Spektr-RG:
The Spektr-RG spacecraft, developed by NPO Lavochkina (part of Roscosmos State Corporation), was launched on July 13, 2019 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The observatory is equipped with two unique X-ray specular telescopes: ART-XC and eROSITA, operating on the principle of oblique x-ray optics. Telescopes are installed on the Navigator space platform (NPO Lavochkina, Russia), adapted for the project objectives.
The main goal of the mission is to build a map of the entire sky in the soft (0.3-8 keV) and hard (4-20 keV) ranges of the X-ray spectrum with unprecedented sensitivity. The observatory must work in space for at least 6.5 years.
Related articles:
Spektr-RG commences sky scanning
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2019/12/spektr-rg-commences-sky-scanning.html
Roscosmos - Spektr-RG launched
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2019/07/roscosmos-spektr-rg-launched.html
Related links:
Roscosmos Press Release: https://www.roscosmos.ru/28294/
Спектр-РГ (Spektr-RG): https://www.roscosmos.ru/srg/
Images, Text, Credits: ROSCOSMOS/Orbiter.ch Aerospace/Roland Berga.
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