Speaker
Andrea Merloni
(MPE)
Description
eROSITA (extended ROentgen Survey with an Imaging Telescope Array) is
the core instrument on the Russian Spektrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) mission
which is current scheduled for launch in 2016. eROSITA will perform a
deep survey of the entire X-ray sky. In the soft band (0.5-2 keV), it
will be about 30 times more sensitive than ROSAT, while in the hard band
(2-8 keV) it will provide the first ever true imaging survey of the sky.
The design driving science is the detection of large samples of galaxy
clusters, in order to study the large scale structure in the Universe
and test cosmological models including Dark Energy. In addition, eROSITA
is expected to yield a sample of around 3 million active galactic
nuclei, which is bound to revolutionize our view of the evolution of
supermassive black holes and their impact on the process of structure
formation in the Universe. The survey will also provide new insights
into a wide range of astrophysical phenomena, including isolated Neutron
Stars and Black Holes, X-ray binaries, active stars and diffuse emission
within the Galaxy, as well as more exotic ones such as gamma-ray bursts,
tidal disruption of stars in galactic nuclei and binary black holes. In
this talk I will review the current mission status and discuss the major
scientific goals of the project.
