eROSITA (extended ROentgen Survey with an Imaging Telescope Array) is the core instrument on the Russian/German Spektrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) mission which is current scheduled for launch in 2018. In the soft band (0.5-2 keV), the deep All-sky survey will be 30 times more sensitive than the previous ROSAT All-sky survey, while the first ever true all-sky survey will be mapped in the hard band (2-8 keV). The design driving science is the detection of large samples of galaxy clusters to redshifts z > 1, 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. Finally, the survey will also provide new insights into a wide range of astrophysical phenomena, including neutron stars and pulsars, X-ray binaries, active stars and diffuse emission from supernova remnants. The talk reports on the status of eROSITA and its scientific prospects. In the end, I will also briefly discuss how the German eROSITA consortium is activated for ensuring an adequate follow-up of the sources to be discovered.
SAP