Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik
X-Ray Astronomy - ROSAT Calendar 1999
Deutsche Version MPE HEG X-Ray Astronomy Wave ROSAT Gallery ROSAT Calendar Images 1999
X-ray Scattering Halo of Scorpius X-1 during its Lunar Occultation
On February 20, 1998 a very rare event was observed with ROSAT: Scorpius X-1, the brightest X-ray source in the sky, was occulted by the Moon. This event takes place only every 16 years. Scorpius X-1 was the only X-ray source in the sky, which due to its very large photon flux, could not be observed directly by the ROSAT PSPC. Therefore, the detector was switched on a few seconds after Scorpius X-1 had disappeared behind the limb of the Moon. Only the X-ray halo, which is due to the scattering of its X-rays by interstellar dust, was visible. This occurence is interesting from the historical point of view, since Scorpius X-1 was the first cosmic X-ray source discovered accidentally by the famous rocket experiment in 1962 and this project aimed at the detection of X-rays from the Moon. At that time Scorpius X-1 was about 45 degrees away from the Moon.
Gzipped tif
version of the calendar image.
Movie of the lunar occultation in
MPEG
or
AVI
format.
ROSAT (Röntgensatellit) 1999
Images from the X-ray sky with the ROSAT telescope · All rights reserved:
© Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, Postfach 1603, 85740 Garching, Germany.
The X-ray images are produced by the SASS/EXSAS software MPE, ESO-MIDAS.
The ROSAT project was managed by the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR), Germany on behalf of the Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft, Forschung und Technologie (BMBF).
© X-Ray Group at MPE (group)
last update:2009-04-16, editor of this page:Peter Predehl, Frank Haberl
