Abstract

Contributed Talk - Splinter jungeAG   (MW-0337)

eROSITA - keeping up with the blazars

S. Hämmerich (1), A. Gokus (2), P. Weber (1), L. Marcotulli (2), F. McBride (3), A. Zainab (1), W. Collmar (4), J. Wilms (1) on behalf of the eROSITA blazar team
1) Dr. Karl Remeis Sternwarte Bamberg & ECAP (FAU) 2) DESY Zeuthen 3) Bowdoin College 4) Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, Garching

The eROSITA X-ray telescope on board of the Spectrum Roentgen Gamma (SRG) spacecraft offers the most complete X-ray data set of the entire sky. Blazars, which are active galactic nuclei with a relativistic jet aligned with our line of sight, can therefore be studied in great detail in the X-ray regime. Starting from the first eROSITA all-sky survey and the BLAZE catalog -- a collection of know blazars and blazar candidates from the literature -- we created BlazEr1, the largest X-ray blazar catalog to date. BlazEr1 includes 5865 sources, with eROSITA providing the first X-ray detection for nearly 2000 of them. We then performed a comprehensive study of their X-ray and multi-wavelength properties. We further utilized the cumulative eROSITA dataset, comprising 4.5 all-sky surveys, to construct BlazErV, which contains nearly 10000 blazars and blazar candidates. This unprecedented sample enabled a detailed investigation of the X-ray variability properties of the most complete X-ray blazar sample assembled to date. In addition to using established variability measures, we developed a new approach to characterize variability for low-statistic time series. Between 20 and 40% of the sample varies significantly. We will present the highlights from BlazEr1 to BlazErV, discussing their X-ray and multiwavelength properties as well as their variability characteristics.