DLR: eROSITA – The Hunt for Dark Energy Begins

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DLR: eROSITA – The Hunt for Dark Energy Begins

Post by bystander » Tue Jun 18, 2019 3:46 pm

eROSITA – The Hunt for Dark Energy Begins
German Aerospace Center (DLR) | 2019 Jun 18

The eROSITA X-ray Telescope - On the Hunt for Dark Energy
Credit: DLR - German Aerospace Center

On 21 June 2019 the Spektrum-Röntgen-Gamma (Spektr-RG / SRG) spacecraft will be launched from the Kazakh steppe, marking the start of an exciting journey. SRG will be carrying the German ‘extended ROentgen Survey with an Imaging Telescope Array’ (eROSITA) X-ray telescope and its Russian ART-XC partner instrument. A Proton rocket will carry the spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome towards its destination – the second Lagrange point of the Sun-Earth system, L2, which is 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. In orbit around this equilibrium point, eROSITA will embark upon the largest ever survey of the hot Universe. The space telescope will use its seven X-ray detectors to observe the entire sky and search for and map hot sources such as galaxy clusters, active black holes, supernova remnants, X-ray binaries and neutron stars. “eROSITA’s X-ray ‘eyes’ are the best that have ever been launched as part of a space telescope. Their unique combination of light-collecting area, field-of-view and resolution makes them approximately 20 times more sensitive than the ROSAT telescope that flew to space in the 1990s. ROSAT also incorporated advanced technology that was ‘made in Germany’. With its enhanced capabilities, eROSITA will help researchers gain a better understanding of the structure and development of the Universe, and also contribute towards investigations into the mystery of Dark Energy,” says Walther Pelzer, Executive Board Member for the Space Administration at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR), which supported the development of eROSITA at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE). ...

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MPE: eROSITA Launch Heralds New Era for X-ray Astronomy

Post by bystander » Mon Jul 15, 2019 7:06 pm

eROSITA Launch Heralds New Era for X-ray Astronomy
Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) | 2019 Jul 13

MPE telescope will revolutionize our view of the evolving hot Universe

Click to play embedded YouTube video.
At 14:31 on 13 July 2019, the Spektrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) space mission successfully lifted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome. On-board is the eROSITA X-ray telescope, which was developed and built by a consortium of German institutes supported by DLR and led by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE). Now on its way to an L2 orbit, 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, eROSITA will perform a deep survey of the entire X-ray sky over the next four years, providing the first ever deep imaging survey of the sky at soft and hard X-rays. ...

eROSITA is part of the Russian-German Spektrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) space mission, which also includes the Russian ART-XC telescope. The eROSITA X-ray telescope was developed and built under the leadership of Predehl at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE), together with several University partners. It will perform a deep survey of the entire X-ray sky. In the soft X-ray band (0.5-2 keV), this will be more than 20 times more sensitive than the prior ROSAT all sky survey, also led by MPE, while in the hard X-ray band (2-10 keV) it will provide the first ever true imaging survey of the sky at those energies. Over a period of four years eROSITA is expected to find 100,000 X-ray emitting galaxy clusters, several million active black holes in the centres of galaxies, and many rare objects such as isolated neutron stars. In its first year, eROSITA will discover more new X-ray sources than have been seen in the entire 50-plus year history of X-ray astronomy.

“The main scientific goal of eROSITA is to reveal the large scale structure of the Universe and how that structure grows over cosmic time. This might help reveal the properties of the mysterious ‘dark energy’ pulling the Universe apart,” explains Andrea Merloni, the eROSITA Project Scientist. “The clusters of galaxies that mark out that structure are filled with gas at temperatures of a million degrees or more. To see that directly, you have to use an X-ray telescope. With eROSITA covering the whole sky, we can see enough of them to reconstruct their growth history extremely accurately. That in turn tells us something about the amount, and perhaps the nature, of dark energy and dark matter.” ...
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MPE: eROSITA Sees First Light

Post by bystander » Fri Oct 25, 2019 8:23 pm

Revealing the Beauty of the Hidden Universe: eROSITA Sees First Light
Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) | 2019 Oct 22

The scientific performance demonstrated in the first weeks of operations of the eROSITA X-ray telescope promises a breakthrough in our understanding of the energetic Universe.

On 22 October 2019, the beautiful first X-ray images of the eROSITA telescope were presented to the public ... After an extended commissioning phase, since October 13 all seven X-ray telescope modules with their custom-designed CCD cameras have been observing the sky simultaneously. The first combined X-ray images of our neighbouring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, and a pair of interacting clusters of galaxies at a distance of about 800 Million lightyears, show remarkable details and demonstrate the promise of the ambitious science programme planned with the space-borne telescope. ...

The eROSITA ‘First Light’ images were obtained in a series of exposures of all seven telescope modules with a combined integration time of about one day for both the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), our neighbouring galaxy, and the A3391/3395 system of interacting clusters of galaxies at a distance of about 800 Million lightyears.

In our neighbouring galaxy, the LMC, eROSITA not only shows the distribution of the diffuse hot gas, but also some remarkable details, such as supernova remnants like SN1987A. The eROSITA image now confirms that this source is becoming fainter, as the shock wave produced by the stellar explosion in 1987 propagates through the interstellar medium. In addition to a host of other hot objects in the LMC itself, eROSITA also reveals a number of foreground stars from our own Milky Way galaxy as well as distant Active Galactic Nuclei, whose radiation pierces the diffuse emission of the hot gas in the LMC. ...

eROSITA Takes Its First Look at the Hot Universe
German Aerospace Center (DLR) | 2019 Oct 22

X-ray Scout Sees First Light
Max Planck Gesellschaft | 2019 Oct 22
Last edited by bystander on Mon Oct 28, 2019 3:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Added MPG link
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MPE: SRG all-sky survey promises most accurate X-ray maps

Post by bystander » Mon Feb 03, 2020 7:20 pm

With the start of the SRG all-sky survey, eROSITA
promises most accurate maps of the X-ray sky ever

Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) | 2019 Dec 08
Launched from Baikonur on July 13th 2019 to the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L2), the Russian-German SRG mission has now started its main task. On December 8th, after an extensive program of commissioning, calibration and performance verification of its two X-ray telescopes (ART-XC and eROSITA), the satellite has begun observing the sky in continuous scanning mode. As SRG follows the revolution of Earth, and hence also of the L2 point, around the Sun, it will perform eight complete surveys of the whole sky, one every six months, for the next 4 years. Pre-launch predictions suggest that, over that time, the eROSITA instrument, conceived, designed and built at MPE, should discover approximately 100,000 clusters of galaxies, around 3 million accreting supermassive black holes and half a million active stars.

To confirm those predictions for the all-sky survey, eROSITA scientists have performed a number of test observations over the past few weeks. Among those, a mini-survey called eFEDS (eROSITA Final Equatorial Depth Survey) was devised in order to image a small patch of the sky to the same depth expected at the end of the 4-years all-sky survey. The eFEDS data show the same stunning image quality demonstrated by the eROSITA first light (see also IKI press-release featuring more eROSITA images of the Lockman Hole and the Galactic Plane). More importantly, they allowed the scientists to confirm with great accuracy the sensitivity of the X-ray telescope to its main target classes. ...
Know the quiet place within your heart and touch the rainbow of possibility; be
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