On February 1, a team of astronomers and cosmologists published the first data from the eROSITA sky survey. The data includes a cosmic map of half of the universe that was taken in X-ray light. Scientists from institutions in Germany and Russia used the eROSITA space telescope, which is positioned at Lagrange Point 2 near the James Webb Space Telescope. The soft X-ray imaging telescope generated a detailed X-ray view of the sky over the western hemisphere. The map includes close to one million cosmic sources of energy, including more than 700,000 supermassive black holes that are gobbling up the centers of galaxies.
[Related: What is matter? It’s not as basic as you’d think.]
This new survey called the eROSITA All-Sky Survey Catalogue (eRASS1) is the largest-ever catalog of the most powerful sources of energy in the universe. The data was gathered between December 12, 2019 and June 11, 2020. According to the team from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany, eROSITA was able to capture 170 million individual particles of X-ray light called photons. By measuring the energy and arrival time of each photon, astronomers could build a detailed map of the cosmos. The team did so by processing and calibrating the photons detected by the telescope against both bright and diffuse backgrounds.
In addition to the over 900,000 X-ray sources and supermassive black holes, the map has about 180,000 X-ray-emitting stars in the Milky Way and 12,000 galaxy clusters. It includes some less common objects like pulsars, binary stars, and supernova remnants. The survey also features some cosmic web filaments. These bunches of hot gas are the largest known structures in the universe and connect galaxies in clusters.Â
Read the full article here