Max Planck Institute for extraterrestrial Physics

Presskit: Space Telescope Studies Solar System X-ray Glow

April 16, 2026

This page provides downloadable images, videos and graphics accompanying the MPE article “Space Telescope Studies Solar System X-ray Glow”.
You are welcome to use these materials in your own reporting, provided that the appropriate credit is given for each visual.
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Detailed X-ray image of the sky, illustrating various cosmic phenomena with vibrant colors and bright spots. — Reconstruction of how the diffuse X-ray sky should have appeared to eROSITA from May to October 2021. At any given moment, eROSITA has observed only a 1° wide field along its scanning direction, which is indicated by a cyan curve. Each 360° scan took 4 hours and was done approximately perpendicularly to the direction of the Sun, which is located in the overexposed moving region. See eROSITA Press Kit for information on the underlying sky image: https://www.mpe.mpg.de/7461950/erass1-presskit

K. Dennerl, J. Sanders, H. Brunner & the eSASS team (MPE); E. Churazov, M. Gilfanov (IKI)

Reconstruction of how the diffuse X-ray sky should have appeared to eROSITA from May to October 2021. At any given moment, eROSITA has observed only a 1° wide field along its scanning direction, which is indicated by a cyan curve. Each 360° scan took 4 hours and was done approximately perpendicularly to the direction of the Sun, which is located in the overexposed moving region. See eROSITA Press Kit for information on the underlying sky image: https://www.mpe.mpg.de/7461950/erass1-presskit

K. Dennerl, J. Sanders, H. Brunner & the eSASS team (MPE); E. Churazov, M. Gilfanov (IKI)

Visualization of Earth's geocorona in Ly-α, showing SRG/eROSITA orbit from 2019 to 2020 with scanning direction. — SRG/eROSITA orbit in the Sun-Earth system: Scanning the sky far away from Earth and approximately perpendicular to Earth’s direction, eROSITA is the first X-ray telescope to avoid geocoronal emission.

K. Dennerl (MPE)

SRG/eROSITA orbit in the Sun-Earth system: Scanning the sky far away from Earth and approximately perpendicular to Earth’s direction, eROSITA is the first X-ray telescope to avoid geocoronal emission.

K. Dennerl (MPE)

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K. Dennerl, J. Sanders, H. Brunner & the eSASS team (MPE); E. Churazov, M. Gilfanov (IKI)

Reconstruction of how the diffuse X-ray sky should have appeared to eROSITA from May to October 2021. At any given moment, eROSITA has observed only a 1 degree wide field along its scanning direction, which is indicated by a cyan curve. Each 360 deg scan took 4 hours and was done approximately perpendicularly to the direction of the Sun, where the emission is brightest. See https://www.mpe.mpg.de/7461950/erass1-presskit for information on the underlying sky image.

K. Dennerl (MPE)

Illustration of the separation of the SWCX foreground emission from the cosmic X-ray sky, for the Western Galactic hemisphere. The stripe patterns visible in the SWCX image result from temporal variations in foreground emission combined with eROSITA’s scanning geometry. See https://erosita.mpe.mpg.de/dr1/ for information on the underlying sky image.

Reconstruction of the SWCX volume emissivity in the ecliptic plane from May to October 2021. A cyan circle marks the Earth’s orbit, and eROSITA’s observing directions are indicated by cyan lines. At this scale, the position of SRG/eROSITA coincides with that of Earth. The arrow shows the direction of Sun’s motion relative to the interstellar medium.

Solar Cycle

Brightening and latitudinal expansion of the SWCX emission during the rising part of the solar activity cycle. The projection matches that in the previous video. A thick line marks the ecliptic plane, and ecliptic latitudes of -30° and -60° are indicated by dashed and dotted lines, respectively, while the south ecliptic pole is denoted by a dot.

Visual explainer of how solar wind charge exchange (SWCX) works

The video illustrates the principle of SWCX by depicting an encounter between a highly charged oxygen ion in the solar wind and a neutral water molecule: an outer electron is transferred from the water molecule to the oxygen ion, leaving it in an excited state. As it relaxes, the ion emits a “soft” X-ray photon with an energy of 561 eV.

Illustration of how SWCX reveals very thin gas

The video first presents an optical image of a comet, followed by the corresponding X-ray image with color-coded intensities, shown at the same scale and taken nearly simultaneously. The X-ray emission arises from solar wind charge exchange (SWCX) with the tenuous gas surrounding the comet. The color intensity map is then replaced by a more monochromatic rendering with contour lines, and the optical image is overlaid for direct comparison, highlighting that SWCX-induced X-rays are an extremely sensitive tracer of tenuous gas.