Scientists have revealed the largest ever X-ray image of the cosmos and discovered over 9,00,000 high-energy cosmic objects, including more than 7,000 supermassive black holes. On January 31, the German “eROSITA” consortium published data obtained by its X-ray telescope aboard the Russian-German satellite Spektrum-RG.
The first eROSITA All-Sky Inspection Catalogue (eRASS1) is the largest collection of X-ray sources ever published, according to an official statement from Germany’s Max Planck Society, which assisted in mission management.
“In the first six months of observation, eROSITA has already discovered more X-ray sources than have been known in the 60-year history of X-ray astronomy,” it said.
The eRASS1 observations with the eROSITA telescope occurred between December 12, 2019, and June 11, 2020. eROSITA was placed in “Safe Mode” in February 2022 and has not resumed scientific operations since, according to the Max Planck Society.
In addition to approximately 7,10,000 supermassive black holes in distant galaxies, the 9,00,000 high-energy cosmic sources included 1,80,000 X-ray emitting stars in the Milky Way, 12,000 galaxy clusters, and a small number of other exotic classes of sources such as X-ray emitting binary stars, supernova remnants, pulsars, and other objects.
“These are mind-blowing numbers for X-ray astronomy,” Andrea Merloni, eROSITA principal investigator, said.
“We’ve detected more sources in 6 months than the big flagship missions XMM-Newton and Chandra have done in nearly 25 years of operation,” she added.
