The most detailed X-rays of the universe have been released. look at the picture

New Delhi:

Scientists have unveiled the largest ever X-ray map of the universe, finding more than 900,000 high-energy cosmic sources, including more than 700,000 supermassive black holes.

On January 31, the German “eROSITA” consortium published data collected by the eROSITA X-ray telescope on board the Russian-German Spektrum-RG satellite.

The first eROSITA All-Sky Survey Catalog (eRASS1) is the largest collection of X-ray sources ever published, the Max Planck Society in Germany, which helped manage the mission, said in an official statement.

Radiograph of half the body #being: The first release of eROSITA Sky Survey data brings to the public the largest catalog ever of high-energy cosmic sources 😲 https://t.co/POg5FuVraP@eROSITA_SRG@MPE_Garchingpic.twitter.com/X21gnUD6iW

— Max Planck Society (@maxplanckpress) January 31, 2024

“In its first six months of observation, Aeroceta has already discovered more X-ray sources than were known in the 60-year history of X-ray astronomy,” she said.

Observations of eRASS1 were made using the eROSITA telescope between December 12, 2019 and June 11, 2020.

The Max Planck Society said Aeroceta was placed in safe mode in February 2022 and scientific operations have not resumed since then.

Besides about 7,10,000 supermassive black holes in distant galaxies, the 9,00,000 high-energy cosmic sources also include 1,80,000 X-ray emitting stars in the Milky Way, 12,000 clusters of galaxies and a small number of other exotic source categories. . Such as X-rays emitted by binary stars, supernova remnants, pulsars, and other objects.

“These are amazing numbers for X-ray astronomy,” said Andrea Merloni, principal investigator at EROSITA.

“We have discovered more sources in 6 months than the two large main missions XMM-Newton and Chandra during their nearly 25 years of work,” she added.