Two Million X-Ray Sources, and One Cluster That Doesn't Fit

The eROSITA telescope has released its second great catalogue of the X-ray sky with close to two million sources across half the sky, roughly double what it published before. Buried in it is a result from Bonn that matters more than the headline number. A team there went after the faintest part of a massive galaxy cluster, the outer region where fresh materi

The top 3

  1. Top 3 Most Luminous Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN): Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), powered by supermassive black holes, are among the brightest X-ray sources, with some quasars emitting X-rays 10 billion times the power of the Sun. The most distant black hole detected in X-rays, UHZ1, was found just 470 million years after the Big Bang, with a mass between 10 and 100 million Suns. Another rapidly feeding black hole, LID-568, was discovered 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, accreting matter over 40 times its theoretical limit.
  2. Most Energetic Neutron Stars and Pulsars: Neutron stars and pulsars are powerful X-ray emitters, with Scorpius X-1 being the strongest persistent non-solar X-ray source in the sky, emitting 60,000 times the Sun's total luminosity. XMM-Newton has detected a large burst of light from a tiny neutron star in a binary pair and observed three exceptionally young neutron stars that are unusually cold.
  3. Record-Breaking Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs): Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most powerful explosions in the universe, with GRB 221009A, dubbed 'BOAT' (Brightest Of All Time), being the brightest X-ray and gamma-ray burst since human civilization began. This event, observed 1.9 billion light-years away, was exceptionally luminous and long-lasting, originating from the birth cry of a new black hole.

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