The Russian

the Russian space Observatory “Spektr-RG” has built the world’s best x-ray map of the sky. After six months scanning the sky the telescope was able to double the total number of sources registered all satellites in the world for 60 years x-ray astronomy.

And here are the first results of hard work — a million sources and the milky way x-ray map of the entire sky. The images were published on the official website of Institute of space research.

In the center of the map is a supermassive black hole with mass of 4 million solar masses. The equator is the plane of our milky way Galaxy, which we can witness in full glory in the South of our country on a moonless summer night. But on the x-ray map of the milky way looks like a dark band due to the fact that the molecular gas and dust absorb x-rays. The blue dots are pulsars, black holes in binary stellar systems and the remnants of supernova explosions.

Good angular resolution and high sensitivity of the telescope allowed us to map more than a million sources of radiation. That amount of data will not fit on one image. At this the were only the brightest of sources, but a lot of them — many thousands.

“Spektr-RG” is a spacecraft developed at NPO Lavochkin. In its creation was also attended by experts from Germany in the framework of the Federal space program of Russia. The orbital Observatory is equipped with two unique x-ray mirror telescopes: the Russian ART-XC and eROSITA German. Today “Spektr-RG” is one of the best observatories in the world, able to do a full sky survey with highest sensitivity.

“We see the milky way and the entire Universe in x-rays. It is very difficult because x-rays are not reflected from the mirror. And we have this tool that watch is an enormous amount of paraboloids and hyperbolaeDov, where the scattering occurs at small angles. But the amount is typed in a large area, and we can build a picture, very good,” said Rashid Sunyaev, scientific Director of the Observatory “Spektr-RG”, academician of RAS, laureate of the State prize of the Russian Federation.

Telescopes continue to work. Soon the Observatory will begin the second view of the sky. Over the next three years it is planned to have seven more detailed maps. The results of this complex work an overview of heaven is a real treasure trove of data for astrophysicists, and the resulting maps and directories will be used by scientists around the world for at least the next 20 years. While one of the space Agency decides that it’s time to make new, more detailed x-ray map of the sky.