X-ray astrophysics

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.

The new catalogue includes more than one and a half thousand objects. Mikhail Pavlinsky ART-XC telescope is one of the two instruments aboard Russian Spektr-RG space observatory, currently working in L2 point.

SN2024ggi, a II-type supernova, was first found on April 11, 2024 by ATLAS project team. It sits in a nearby galaxy NGC3621. Mikhail Pavlinsky ART-XC telescope onboard Spektr-RG observatory was the first to register its X-ray emission.

After the first few days of observations a new X-ray source turned out to be a pulsar in a binary system with a low-mass companion.

Data from 2-year sky survey by SRG/eROSITA were used to study X-ray variability of thousands of SDSS quasars. X-ray variability appeared to be linked with some physical parameters of supermassive black holes, such as theirs masses and accretion rates.