Russian astrophysicists have for the first time isolated the intrinsic X-ray emission of the central stellar disk of the Milky Way. This was achieved using the ART-XC telescope named after M. N. Pavlinsky, installed on board the Spektr-RG observatory. Previously, signals from this region were "drowned out" by the radiation from bright sources — black holes and neutron stars, but now their contribution has been calculated and removed.
As explained by Valentin Nezabudkin, an employee of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a " протяжённая структура, практически совпадающая по форме и размерам с диском, известным по инфракрасным наблюдениям" appeared on the cleaned map. The radiation turned out to be the result of the combined glow of hundreds of thousands of weak sources — primarily cataclysmic variables, close binary systems where matter flows onto a white dwarf and heats up to millions of degrees.
Scientists measured the total X-ray luminosity of the disk — about 6×10³⁶ erg/s. At the same time, its specific luminosity, that is, the amount of radiation per unit of stellar mass, turned out to be approximately three times higher than that of the rest of the Milky Way. This may indicate that special types of stellar systems prevail in the center of the Galaxy, differing in their composition and activity.
The discovery provides a new tool for studying the structure and evolution of the core of our Galaxy. X-ray radiation penetrates through the dust and gas hiding the center of the Milky Way, so the results of ART-XC allow us to look into where visible light does not reach, and better understand the processes that form the stellar population of the Galaxy.
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