Roskosmos has launched a German-Russian space telescope to replace Moscow's Hubble-like Spektr-R. The telescope will allow scientists to observe more than 100,000 galaxy clusters, marking "the beginning of a new era."
Image: Reuters/Handout Roscosmos
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Looking for Dark Energy
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Russia's space agency on Saturday launched the Spektr-RG space telescope, a German-Russian venture, to replace a similar one that it lost contact with earlier this year.
The Spektr-R stopped responding to ground control in January. Russian space agency Roskosmos could not determine how it lost control of the satellite and formally ended its mission in May. Spektr-RG's launch was postponed twice due to battery issues.
Roskosmos said Saturday's launch had gone well. "Next stage: 3 months after launch — cruise to L2, positioning, calibration and testing, test observations," Roskosmos said, referring to the following phases of the mission.
The eROSITA is a state-of-the-art telescope created by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial PhysicsImage: picture-alliance/Peter Friedrich/MPE/dpa
'Beginning of a new era'
The new Spektr-RG is carrying the X-ray telescope eROSITA. That instrument was provided by the Munich-based Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics.
"eROSITA marks the beginning of a new era in X-ray astronomy," said the institute in a statement. "No telescope has ever taken such a detailed look at the entire sky."
The eROSITA is expected to detect more than 100,000 galaxy clusters in a bid to measure dark energy in the universe. It will be accompanied by a Russian-made instrument, the ART-XC.
The Spektr-R and its successor were created to observe black holes and map the cosmos to better understand how the universe is expanding.
Out of this world: Scientists discover 300,000 new galaxies
Using the LOFAR radio telescope, astronomers have discovered hundreds of thousands of previously undetected galaxies. Scientists hope the find will allow them to learn more about black holes and how galaxy clusters form.
Image: LOFAR/Maya Horton
Red flickers
This montage shows several galaxies from the HETDEX region. More than 200 scientists from 18 countries discovered hundreds of thousands of galaxies that no human has ever seen before. The astronomers created the new map of the northern sky with the radio telescope network LOFAR (Low Frequency Array).
Image: LOFAR/Judith Croston
Fluorescent wings
The different colors in the radio source B3 0157+406 indicate the presence of large-scale turbulences in the source's magnetic field. Less scientific observers might see faces in the wing-shaped structures.
Image: LOFAR/Maya Horton
Spiral galaxy
This brightly colored tail belongs to spiral galaxy M106. Researchers believe the flame-looking structures are the result of activity from the galaxy's central supermassive black hole. "With LOFAR, we want to find out which influence black holes have on the galaxies in which they are located," said Marcus Brüggen, an astrophysicist at the University of Hamburg.
Image: LOFAR/Cyril Tasse
The 'Whirlpool Galaxy'
No, we did not make this nickname up! M51 is known as the "Whirlpool Galaxy" among LOFAR-astronomers, and it's not hard to see why. It's between 15 and 35 million light-years away from Earth and has a supermassive black hole at its center as well.
Image: LOFAR/Sean Mooney
The all-seeing red eye
This merging galaxy cluster goes by the snappy name of CIZA J2242.8+5301. Among astronomers it's known for its northern arch, dubbed the "Sausage." Researchers hope the new LOFAR data will also give them more information on how galaxy clusters evolve.
Image: LOFAR/Duy Hoang
Explosions in space
What you see here are supernova explosions in the spiral arms of galaxy IC 342. Pretty awesome, right? "This is a new window on the universe," said Cyril Tasse, an astronomer at the Paris Observatory who was involved in the LOFAR project, said about the newly discovered galaxies.
Image: LOFAR/Maya Horton
Glimmering stars
Even LOFAR astronomers will use some trickery to arrive at the most beautiful picture sometimes. For this glittering snapshot, they super-imposed LOFAR images of a galaxy on an optical photo of the night sky. We'd say the effort paid off.
Image: LOFAR/Cyril Tasse
'10 million DVDs'
The galaxy cluster Abell 1314 is located at a distance of approximately 460 million light-years away from Earth. LOFAR researchers will have mountains of data to look into from Abell 1314 and the roughly 300,000 other galaxies they have now discovered. "We have to work through the equivalent of 10 million DVDs," Dominik Schwarz from Bielefeld University in Germany said.
