Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                                2020 June 23

                         The X-Ray Sky from eROSITA
    Image Credit & Copyright: J. Sanders, H. Brunner, A. Merloni & eSASS
           Team (MPE); E. Churazov, M. Gilfanov, R. Sunyaev (IKI)

   Explanation: What if you could see X-rays? The night sky would seem a
   strange and unfamiliar place. X-rays are about 1,000 times more
   energetic than visible light photons and are produced by violent
   explosions and high temperature astronomical environments. Instead of
   the familiar steady stars, the sky would seem to be filled with exotic
   stars, active galaxies, and hot supernova remnants. The featured X-ray
   image captures in unprecedented detail the entire sky in X-rays as seen
   by the eROSITA telescope onboard Spektr-RG satellite, orbiting around
   the L2 point of the Sun-Earth system, launched last year. The image
   shows the plane of our Milky Way galaxy across the center, a diffuse
   and pervasive X-ray background, the hot interstellar bubble known as
   the North Polar Spur, sizzling supernova remnants such as Vela, the
   Cygnus Loop and Cas A, energetic binary stars including Cyg X-1 and Cyg
   X-2, the LMC galaxy, and the Coma, Virgo, and Fornax clusters of
   galaxies. This first sky scan by eROSITA located over one million X-ray
   sources, some of which are not understood and will surely be topics for
   future research.

                   Tomorrow's picture: inverted cloud city
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
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                             & Michigan Tech. U.

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