eROSITA (extended ROentgen Survey with an Imaging Telescope Array) is the primary instrument on the Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) mission, which was successfully launched on July 13, 2019, from the Baikonour cosmodrome. After the commissioning of the instrument and a subsequent calibration and performance verification phase, eROSITA started a survey of the entire sky on December 13, 2019. By the end of 2023, eight complete scans of the celestial sphere will have been performed, each lasting six months. At the end of this program, the eROSITA all-sky survey in the soft X-ray band (0.2-2.3 keV) will be about 25 times more sensitive than the ROSAT All-Sky Survey, while in the hard band (2.3-8 keV) it will provide the first ever true imaging survey of the sky. The eROSITA design driving science is the detection of large samples of galaxy clusters up to redshifts z > 1 in order to study the large-scale structure of the universe and test cosmological models including Dark Energy. In addition, eROSITA is expected to yield a sample of a few million AGNs, including obscured objects, revolutionizing our view of the evolution of supermassive black holes. The survey will also provide new insights into a wide range of astrophysical phenomena, including X-ray binaries, active stars, and diffuse emission within the Galaxy. Results from early observations, some of which are presented here, confirm that the performance of the instrument is able to fulfil its scientific promise. With this paper, we aim to give a concise description of the instrument, its performance as measured on ground, its operation in space, and also the first results from in-orbit measurements.

The orbital observatory Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG), equipped with the grazing-incidence X-ray telescopes Mikhail Pavlinsky ART-XC and eROSITA, was launched by Roscosmos to the Lagrange L2 point of the Sun-Earth system on July 13, 2019. The launch was carried out from the Baikonur Cosmodrome by a Proton-M rocket with a DM-03 upper stage. The German telescope eROSITA was installed on SRG under an agreement between Roskosmos and the DLR, the German Aerospace Agency. In December 2019, SRG started to perform its main scientific task: scanning the celestial sphere to obtain X-ray maps of the entire sky in several energy ranges (from 0.3 to 8 keV with eROSITA, and from 4 to 30 keV with ART-XC). By mid-June 2021, the third six-month all-sky survey had been completed. Over a period of four years, it is planned to obtain eight independent maps of the entire sky in each of the energy ranges. The sum of these maps will provide high sensitivity and reveal more than three million quasars and over one hundred thousand massive galaxy clusters and galaxy groups. The availability of eight sky maps will enable monitoring of long-term variability (every six months) of a huge number of extragalactic and Galactic X-ray sources, including hundreds of thousands of stars with hot coronae. In addition, the rotation of the satellite around the axis directed toward the Sun with a period of four hours enables tracking the faster variability of bright X-ray sources during one day every half year. The chosen strategy of scanning the sky leads to the formation of deep survey zones near both ecliptic poles. The paper presents sky maps obtained by the telescopes on board SRG during the first survey of the entire sky and a number of results of deep observations performed during the flight to the L2 point in the frame of the performance verification program, demonstrating the capabilities of the observatory in imaging, spectroscopy, and timing of X-ray sources. It is planned that in December 2023, the observatory will for at least two years switch to observations of the most interesting sources in the sky in triaxial orientation mode and deep scanning of selected celestial fields with an area of up to 150 square degrees. These modes of operation were tested during the performance verification phase. Every day, data from the SRG observatory are dumped onto the largest antennas of the Russian Deep Space Network in Bear Lakes and near Ussuriysk.

Context. Quasi-periodic pulsations (QPPs) are a common feature of solar and stellar flares, and so the nature of these pulsations should be understood in order to fully understand flares. Aims. We investigate the properties of a set of solar flares originating from a single active region that exhibit QPPs, and in particular look for any indication of the QPP periods relating to active region properties (namely photospheric area, bipole separation distance, and average magnetic field strength at the photosphere), as might be expected if the characteristic timescale of the pulsations corresponds to a characteristic length scale of the structure from which the pulsations originate. The active region studied, known as NOAA 12172/12192/12209, was unusually long-lived and persisted for over three Carrington rotations between September and November 2014. During this time a total of 181 flares were observed by GOES. Methods. Data from the GOES/XRS, SDO/EVE/ESP, Fermi/GBM, Vernov/DRGE and Nobeyama Radioheliograph observatories were used to determine if QPPs were present in the flares. For the soft X-ray GOES/XRS and EVE/ESP data, the time derivative of the signal was used so that any variability in the impulsive phase of the flare was emphasised. Periodogram power spectra of the time series data (without any form of detrending) were inspected, and flares with a peak above the 95% confidence level in the power spectrum were labelled as having candidate QPPs. The confidence levels were determined taking full account of data uncertainties and the possible presence of red noise. Active region properties were determined using SDO/HMI line of sight magnetogram data. Results. A total of 37 flares (20% of the sample) show good evidence of having stationary or weakly non-stationary QPPs, and some of the pulsations can be seen in data from multiple instruments and in different wavebands. Because the detection method used was rather conservative, this may be a lower bound for the true number of flares with QPPs. The QPP periods were found to show a weak correlation with the flare amplitude and duration, but this is likely due to an observational bias. A stronger correlation was found between the QPP period and duration of the QPP signal, which can be partially but not entirely explained by observational constraints. No correlations were found with the active region area, bipole separation distance, or average magnetic field strength. Conclusions. The fact that a substantial fraction of the flare sample showed evidence of QPPs using a strict detection method with minimal processing of the data demonstrates that these QPPs are a real phenomenon, which cannot be explained by the presence of red noise or the superposition of multiple unrelated flares. The lack of correlation between the QPP periods and active region properties implies that the small-scale structure of the active region is important, and/or that different QPP mechanisms act in different cases.

Astronomical Roentgen Telescope – X-ray Concentrator (ART-XC) is the hard X-ray instrument with grazing incidence imaging optics on board the Spektr-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) observatory. The SRG observatory is the flagship astrophysical mission of the Russian Federal Space Program, which was successively launched into orbit around the second Lagrangian point (L2) of the Earth-Sun system with a Proton rocket from the Baikonur cosmodrome on 13 July 2019. The ART-XC telescope will provide the first ever true imaging all-sky survey performed with grazing incidence optics in the 4–30 keV energy band and will obtain the deepest and sharpest map of the sky in the energy range of 4–12 keV. Observations performed during the early calibration and performance verification phase as well as during the ongoing all-sky survey that started on 12 December 2019 have demonstrated that the in-flight characteristics of the ART-XC telescope are very close to expectations based on the results of ground calibrations. Upon completion of its four-year all-sky survey, ART-XC is expected to detect approximately 5000 sources (~3000 active galactic nuclei, including heavily obscured ones, several hundred clusters of galaxies, ~1000 cataclysmic variables and other Galactic sources), and to provide a high-quality map of the Galactic background emission in the 4–12 keV energy band. ART-XC is also well suited for discovering transient X-ray sources. In this paper, we describe the telescope, the results of its ground calibrations, the major aspects of the mission, the in-flight performance of ART-XC, and the first scientific results.

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