This is the most comprehensive X-ray map of the sky ever made
A new map of the entire sky, as seen in X-rays, looks deeper into space than any other of its kind. The map, released June 19, is based on data from the first full scan of the sky made by the eROSITA X-ray telescope onboard the Russian-German SRG spacecraft, which launched in July 2019. The six-month, all-sky survey, which began in December and wrapped up in June, is only the first of eight total sky surveys that eROSITA will perform over the next few years. But this sweep alone cataloged some 1.1 million X-ray sources across the cosmos — just about doubling the number of known X-ray emitters in the universe. These hot and energetic objects include Milky Way stars and supermassive black holes at the centers of other galaxies, some of which are billions of light-years away and date back to when the universe was just one-tenth of its current age. eROSITA’s...