01.02.2024

The X-ray sky opens to the world

First eROSITA sky-survey data release throws open largest ever catalogue of high-energy cosmic sources – University of Tübingen involved in consortium

Today, the German eROSITA consortium, in which the University of Tübingen’s Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IAAT) is involved, released the data for its share of the first all-sky survey by the soft X-ray imaging telescope flying aboard the Spectrum-RG (SRG) satellite. With about 900 000 distinct sources, the first eROSITA All-Sky Survey (eRASS1) catalogue has yielded the largest X-ray catalogue ever published. Along with the data, the consortium released today a series of scientific papers describing new results ranging from studies of the habitability of planets to the discovery of the largest cosmic structures. Based on just the first six months of observations, eROSITA has already detected more sources than had previously been known in the 60-year history of X-ray astronomy. Now available to the worldwide science community, the data will revolutionise our knowledge of the Universe at high energies.

Read complete press release .