Orbital observatory helps in mapping almost 50,000 galactic clusters
MOSCOW, March 7. /TASS/. Researchers managed to map more than a half a million of stars having coronas brighter than the Sun and almost 50,000 galactic clusters owing to surveys completed by the Spektr-RG, a Russian-German orbital observatory, Research Director of the Russian element of the Spektr-RG mission Academician Rashid Syunyaev told TASS.
The observatory made four complete surveys of the sky and one incomplete one before the Germany’s eROSITA telescope was put into the safe mode, the researcher said. Data processing continues now.
"First of all, the number of X-ray wave sources discovered all over the sky increased by almost three times against the first survey. We have recently mapped about two million quasars, more than a half a million stars with coronas hundreds and thousands times more bright than the Sun has, and almost 50,000 galactic clusters - the most massive gravitationally coupled objects in the Universe, filled by the dark matter and the hot intergalactic gas, whose X-ray radiation is being seen by the eROSITA," the Academician noted.
This number of X-ray wave sources is dozens of times above the number of objects known before the Spektr-RG launch, the researcher noted. Detailed processing and analysis of available data will take "many years," Syunyaev said.
"We do not have plenty of X-ray photons, and that’s why we are preparing maps of individual segments and even the entire sky with the use of ion radiation lines of different elements, from oxygen to magnesium, neon and even iron. This makes it possible to study enrichment, for example, of interstellar matter during explosions of supernova stars and discover earlier unknown remnants of supernova stars flared dozens of thousands of years ago, and explore their properties," he added.
Photo by Yuri Smityuk/TASS
