Wednesday, June 16, 2021, the Russian X-ray Space Observatory “Spectr-RG” completed the third overview of all the sky and moved to the fourth.
Every day, the observatory sends 500-700 MB of telemetry information to Earth, which, upon subsequent processing, turns into terabytes of the most valuable scientific information, – explains Alexander Lutovinov, Deputy Director of ICI RAS and Scientific Head of the ART-XC Telescope. MN. M.N. Pavlinsky. – This is a colossal amount of data, researchers in Russia and Germany are already actively working with them. According to the results of each review, the cards of the entire sky are drawn up, which are then folded or analyzed for the search for astrophysical objects and studying their variability. But this is actually only The beginning of the way. The more we “look”, the more details of our cards, and at the end of the “review” stage of the mission we hope to get the most detailed data on what is happening in the X-ray universe. ”
The Russian Space Observatory “Spectr-RG” was brought into space on July 13, 2019 and in December of the same year began to fulfill the first task of its mission – to review the entire heaven in the X-ray range of electromagnetic radiation with record sensitivity. Being at the point of Lagrange, which is distantized from the Earth for 1.5 million km, the Observatory rotates around its axis in such a way that he conducts a full overview of the entire heavenly sphere in half a year. In total, 8 reviews are scheduled during the mission, of which the most detailed X-ray map of the sky will be.
Two X-ray mirror telescope are installed on board the observatory: German Erosita and Russian Art-XC named after M.N. Pavlinsky. They work in various energy ranges, thus, following the results of their cards, complement each other.
After the review of the entire sky, which is designed for 4 years, the observatory will conduct observations in the mode of three-way stabilization of selected sources and sections of the heavenly sphere. This stage will last 2.5 years.