Tenth anniversary of the XMM-Newton telescope

TheDecember 10, 1999, an Ariane 5 rocket took off from Kourou, French Guinea, carrying theXMM-Newton satellite, ten meters long. After several days of maneuvering, it reached its destination, an orbit one third of the way that separates us from the Moon. A few days later, XMM-Newton’s three gold-covered mirror modules began focusing X-rays on its five instruments. Since then, observations made with this telescope have served as the basis for the publication of 2,200 research articles.

TheX-raysthey are generated in space under the most extreme conditions, often as a result of tragic events. They can arise in the strong gravitational and magnetic fields that surroundneutron starso goblack holes, or train whenGiant gas clouds collide with galaxy clusters. The X-ray telescope has also played an important role in the study of thedark matter, a hypothetical substance that is supposed to be five times more abundant than normal matter. Closer to Earth, XMM-Newton has studied theice kitesand theMars atmosphere.

And it’s only the begining. “From a technological point of view,there is nothing that will not allow us to continue another decade“, concludes Norbert Schartel, head of this mission at the European Space Agency (ESA).

Black holes
By identifying the X-rays emitted by iron atoms, the XMM-Newton telescope demonstrated how black holes twist the space-time fabric around themselves. It has also revealed how supermassive black holes grow and how they condition the evolution of the most massive galaxies in the Universe.

Messier 82
Image of the galaxy Messier 82, also known asCigarette Galaxy. The image is composed of several different observations obtained by XMM-Newton of Messier 82, adding52.5 hours of total observation time. The center image shows plumes of hot X-ray glow gas emerging from the galactic disk (in blue), showing very intense star-forming activity.

Stellar birth
This portrait of a star-forming cluster, calledNGC 346, is a combination of images obtained by XMM-Newton, NASA’s Spitzer Special Telescope and ESO (European Southern Observatory) ground-based telescopes.