German high-tech telescope eRosita started in the second start-up into space

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eRosita is to map the space, and around 100,000 galaxies observed. X-ray cameras to make the Invisible visible and more insights about the “dark energy” supply.

In the second round of the German space x-ray telescope eRosita is launched from the Russian spaceport Baikonur into space. Originally, the rocket should be already on the 21. June lift-off. According to the instrumental in the construction of eRosita involved the Max-Planck-Institute for extraterrestrial physics in Garching, near Munich, a battery was not fully charged, which would have been in a Phase for the ignition of the rocket is necessary.

eRosita, as big as a wardrobe, to soon the whole of the universe Shine through. A German-designed and built x-ray telescope is sent on a Mission, which the scientists refer to dry as the “inventory of the universe”. eRosita will hunt black holes, new galaxies and dark energy measure, say the researchers. Not more and not less.

Making the Invisible visible

eRosita will sparks aboard the Russian spacecraft spectrum-roentgen-Gamma (SRG) for almost seven years, from space to the earth. In this case, the telescope is not to capture only the visible heavenly bodies, but also, you can’t see it even in theory.

This is the highlight of such an x-ray telescope consists of seven parallel-aligned modules, each with an x-ray mirror. The mirrors collect high-energy photons and focus them on the CCD x-ray cameras. So eRosita should register the objects due to their heat and radiation. Over the years, eRosita will send a total of eight Scans of the entire sky to the earth.

eRosita will perform an “inventory of the universe”. If it is nothing more….

But before eRosita is expected to reach the entire sky by the eyes, there is a point where it can make best. This place, where the Gravitation of the sun and earth is by centrifugal force lifted is 150 million kilometres from our sun and the Lagrange point L2 is named after Joseph-Louis Lagrange, a French mathematician and astronomer of the 18th century. Century.

Once at the Lagrange point L2 arrived, encircled the Russian probe with the German telescope this place of balance, and moves together with the earth around the sun. Thereby, eRosita will rotate constantly, and certain points of orbit. Once in a year to orbit the sun, and a total of 2,200 times around its own axis.

Infinite-Wide

Up to 100,000 galaxies want to discover the scientist with eRosita. The last similar Experiment, there were in the 1990s. At the time, but only a 20-times weaker telescope was available.

Tense anticipation: eRosita will be fired from Baikonur into space

Thus, it is not eRosita but lonely in space, with the flies a Russian telescope the same. It has developed to the less romantic-sounding name of the ART-XC and was in the prestigious Moscow Lavotchkin research center.

The German scientists from the Max-Plank-Institute, in the eRosita has been built, and their Russian colleagues from the Lavotchkin research center want to know with the help of eRosita and ART-XC also significantly more about the so-called “dark energy”. If the universe is expanding still, is one of the most exciting questions in astrophysics at all.

Answers to the questions of tomorrow

But what has all this to do with our everyday life? Peter Predehl of the Max-Planck-Institute, has an original answer: “If it is asked, what can I buy tomorrow for I am doing research today on black holes, I have nothing other than my Smartphone out and ask: ‘What was needed in the past to make it work today?’ We don’t know what comes out, but if we don’t do it, there comes nothing out of it.”

It is quite possible that eRosita will not deliver in future replies, even though we know at present the question.