Earlier, the map of the entire sky comparable definition were available only in the soft x-rays (at energies below 2 Kev) – she 30 years ago got the German ROSAT Observatory. In the hard x-rays existed only cards with a much worse angular resolution is of the order of degrees of the arc.
But work on building a map and determining the number of sources detected during the scan continues. As agreed before launch, Russian scientists process data from one side of the sky, and German scientists (telescope еROSITA made in Germany) work with x-ray photons came from the other half of the sky.
For the Russian “Spektr-RG” – the first spacecraft, bred and working in the neighborhood of the Lagrange point L2, at a distance of about one and a half million kilometers from Earth. It was launched on July 13 last year from the Baikonur cosmodrome. The Observatory is equipped with two unique x-ray mirror telescopes: ART-XC (IKI, Russia) and eROSITA (MPE, Germany). Just six months scanning the sky doubled the total number of sources registered all satellites in the world for 60 years x-ray astronomy.
“This map of the entire sky completely changes our view of high-energy processes in the Universe,” says Peter Predehl (Peter Predehl), scientific Director of the telescope еROSITA Institute for extraterrestrial physics, max Planck Society (Germany). We see such a wealth of detail – beauty of the image is staggering.”
This map allows you to see hundreds of supernova explosions, and possibly the activity of a supermassive black hole at the galactic center lead to gushing emission of hot gas with temperatures up to 10 million degrees from the plane of our Galaxy. In the radiation zones with lower temperature contribute about two hundred thousand of closest stars from us with crowns much more powerful than our Sun.
But three quarters (!) just “seen” is distant quasars and nuclei of active galaxies, i.e. supermassive black holes at distances of hundreds of millions and billions of light years from us.
“now we can start to use this set of objects at huge distances, to determine the time of their appearance in the Universe and to clarify its properties and parameters, i.e. in order to cosmology,” says the scientific Director of the Observatory “Spektr-RG” academician Rashid Sunyaev.
it is Assumed that using the “Spectrum-RG” will be compiled is the most complete ever map of the Universe: to be discovered about 3 million accretively supermassive black holes, 100,000 galaxy clusters, hundreds of thousands of stars with active crowns, tens of thousands zvezdoobrazovaniya galaxies. All of this is important for understanding how distributed matter in the Universe, what role in its development played dark energy, etc.
Observations continue, and the next 3.5 years review of the entire sky will be repeated seven more times. This will add “depth” to the already achieved-definition x-ray map. Observatory must operate in space for at least six and a half years.
the spacecraft “Spektr-RG”, developed by NPO Lavochkin was launched on 13 July 2019 from the Baikonur cosmodrome. Created with the participation of Germany in the framework of the Federal space program of Russia by order of the wounds. The Observatory is equipped with two unique x-ray mirror telescopes: ART-XC (Russia) and eROSITA (Germany), working on the principle of x-ray optics oblique incidence. The telescopes mounted on the space platform “Navigator” (NPO Lavochkin), adapted to the objectives of the project. The main purpose of the mission is mapping the entire sky in soft (0.3 to 8 Kev) and hard (4-20 Kev) x-ray ranges of the spectrum with unprecedented sensitivity.
