🌅 Today’s stat: 900,000

SOURCE

Max Planck Society

WHAT TO KNOW

• The eROSITA X-ray telescope scanned the cosmos from December 2019 to June 2020, detecting more than 170 million X-ray photons (particles of light) that astronomers later identified as roughly 900,000 distinct space objects. The objects include more than 700,000 supermassive black holes and 180,000 X-ray emitting stars inside our own Milky Way.

WHY IT MATTERS

• While X-ray telescopes are typically used to get a closer look at different space phenomena, astronomers at the Max Planck Institute instead use eROSITA to investigate the bigger picture. That includes the discovery of a massive filament of hot gas spanning 42 million light-years (more than 400 times the length of the Milky Way) between two clusters of galaxies that’s thought to be part of the cosmic web, the vast network of gases that feed all galaxies in the universe.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• The eROSITA all-sky survey isn’t to be confused with the European Space Agency’s ongoing work developing its new “cosmic atlas,” which we shared with you in January. The ESA team is using the Euclid space telescope to map the cosmos and billions of galaxies, capturing 10 billion years of cosmic history in unprecedented detail to better understand the hidden influence of dark energy and dark matter.