Our deepest view of the X-ray sky

Over the course of 182 days, the eROSITA X-ray telescope has completed its first full sweep of the sky which it embarked upon about a year ago.

This new map of the hot, energetic universe contains more than one million objects, roughly doubling the number of known X-ray sources discovered over the 60-year history of X-ray astronomy.

Most of the new sources are active galactic nuclei at cosmological distances, marking the growth of gigantic black holes over cosmic time.

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Credit: Jeremy Sanders, Hermann Brunner und das eSASS-Team (MPE); Eugene Churazov, Marat Gilfanov (im Namen von IKI)

The energetic universe: The first eROSITA all-sky survey was conducted over a period of six months by letting the telescope rotate continuously, thus providing a uniform exposure of about 150-200 seconds over most of the sky, with the ecliptic poles being visited more deeply.

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Credit: Jeremy Sanders, Hermann Brunner, Andrea Merloni and the eSASS team (MPE); Eugene Churazov, Marat Gilfanov (on behalf of IKI)

Annotated version of the eROSITA First All-Sky image. Several prominent X-ray features are marked, ranging from distant galaxy clusters (Coma, Virgo, Fornax, Perseus) to extended sources such as Supernova Remnants (SNRs) and Nebulae to bright point sources, e.g. Sco X-1, the first extrasolar X-ray source to be detected.

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The eRosita X-ray telescope has revealed its first all-sky survey, captured over six months by rotating continuously.

This map containing over one million objects across the hot, energetic universe