News and Recent Results

A team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics has shed light on one of the most elusive components of the universe: the warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM). This "ghost" form of ordinary matter, long hypothesized but rarely detected, is thought to account for a significant portion of the universe's missing baryons — the matter that makes up stars, planets, and galaxies. more

Our Solar System dwells in a low-density environment called the Local Hot Bubble (LHB), filled by a tenuous, million-degree hot gas emitting dominantly in soft X-rays. A team led by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) used the eROSITA All-Sky Survey data and found a large-scale temperature gradient in this bubble, possibly linked with past supernova explosions that expanded and reheated the bubble. The wealth of the eROSITA data also allowed the team to create a new 3D model of the hot gas in the solar neighbourhood. The highlight of this work features the discovery of a new interstellar tunnel towards the constellation Centaurus, potentially joining our LHB with a neighbouring superbubble. more

Dr. Matthias Kluge from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) has received the 2024 Ludwig Biermann Award from the German Astronomical Society. This award recognizes his significant contributions to astrophysics, especially his pioneering research on galaxy clusters. Kluge's efforts with the eROSITA telescope on the SRG mission have been crucial in identifying and analyzing 12,000 galaxy clusters, deepening our knowledge of the cosmic web. more

Identifying massive black holes in low-mass galaxies is crucial for understanding black hole formation and growth over cosmic time but challenging due to their low accretion luminosities. Astronomers at MPE, led by Riccardo Arcodia, used the eROSITA X-ray telescope's all-sky survey to study massive black hole candidates selected based on variability in other wavelength ranges. Surprisingly, despite being flagged as accreting MBHs, the X-rays were weak and didn't match predictions from more massive AGN scaling relations. This discrepancy suggests either the absence of a canonical X-ray corona or the presence of unusual accretion modes and spectral energy distributions in these dwarf galaxy MBHs. more

Odd radio circles (ORC), a recently identified new class of extended faint radio sources, have captivated the curiosity of astronomers worldwide. A groundbreaking discovery by a team led by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics unveils the first detection of diffuse X-ray gas in the vicinity of the Cloverleaf ORC. Leveraging the advanced capabilities of the XMM-Newton telescope and the complementary multi-wavelength observations, the team unveiled the origin of the ORC as a cosmic dance of two galaxy groups.  more

Results from the first X-ray sky survey resolve the previous inconsistency between competing measurements of the structure of the Universe
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First eROSITA sky-survey data release makes public the largest ever catalogue of high-energy cosmic sources more

The X-ray satellite “Einstein Probe” of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) was launched successfully from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in China on a Long March-2C rocket on January 9th, 2024. Equipped with cutting-edge X-ray mirrors and detectors, with major contributions from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE), the spacecraft will start a new era in high-energy time-domain astrophysics, with a particular focus on highly variable and short-lived phenomena associated with black holes and neutron stars in our Milky Way and distant galaxies. more

A new all-sky map by the eROSITA telescope reveals X-rays emitted by million-degree hot plasma in and around the Milky Way. Analysing this data, the team at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics found that the very hot, ionized gas shows a disk-like distribution similar to the stellar disk, possibly embedded in a much larger spherical halo. This discovery sheds light on the shape and size of a large portion of the Milky Way circumgalactic medium, providing a large reservoir of gas to fuel future star formation. more

Researchers have observed the X-ray emission of the most luminous quasar seen in the last 9 billion years of cosmic history. Significant changes in the quasar’s emission give a new perspective on the inner workings of quasars and how they interact with their environment. The study was led by Dr Elias Kammoun, a postdoctoral researcher at the Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology (IRAP), and Zsofi Igo, a PhD candidate at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE). more