X-ray astrophysics

The team of astrophysicists from IKI and other organizations used X-ray data collected by SRG/eROSITA telescope onboard Spektr-RG observatory to look into the hot interior of the S147/Spaghetti nebula and explain its unusual properties.

In February 2025 in-flight tests of the MVN All-Sky X-ray Monitor installed on the outer side of the International Space Station have been successfully completed.

In 2024, IKI scientists and their colleagues completed the analysis of the data from the Milky Way central region deep survey and the first five all-sky surveys (2019–2022) made by Mikhail Pavlinsky ART-XC telescope onboard Spektr-RG X-ray observatory.

On December 19, 2024 cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Wagner installed the MVN single-unit instrument on the outside of the Zvezda Service Module of the ISS, as part of the planned EVA-63. MVN unit is a part of the space experiment MVN, aka All-Sky Monitor.

New model developed by IKI scientists and their colleagues from Ioffe Institute sheds new light on the origin of W50 giant radio nebula, which hides the most reknown X-ray object of our Galaxy – SS433 microquasar.

On August 15, 2024 Soyuz-2.1a rocket launcher blasted off the launch pad at Baikonur cosmodrome carrying Progress MS-28 cargo spaceship to the International Space Station. Its payload includes All-Sky-Monitor X-ray spectrometer, made at IKI, which will study the X-ray background radiation with unprecedented accuracy. Docking to the ISS is scheduled for August 17, 2024.

On July 13, 2019, Proton rocket launcher with DM-03 booster blasted off from Baikonur cosmodrome, carrying Russian X-ray observatory Spektr-RG. Today, we name some — but by no means the only — fascinating results of its work in these five years.

Galactic Center teems with the most extremal and exotic objects. Among them are so-called filaments — long and thin structures. Some of them are visible in radio, the other — in X-rays. They are supposed to appear as a result of relativistic electrons' and positrons' synchrotron radiation. These particles are born near pulsars — rotating neutron stars with strong magtic fields. New observations support this hypothesis.