Uploads from europeanspaceagency, tagged xmmnewton

Hot interior of the Eskimo Nebula

nobody@flickr.com (europeanspaceagency) — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 04:41:42 -0800

Hot X-ray-emitting gas detected by ESA’s XMM-Newton reveals the Eskimo’s blue face shining at 2 million degrees Celsius. It is framed by complex shells of ejected stellar material and a fur-lined hood, seen in optical wavelengths by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (red and green).

The Eskimo Nebula, or NGC 2392, is located about 4000 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Gemini. Astronomer William Herschel discovered the nebula in 1787.

The Eskimo Nebula was observed by XMM-Newton’s EPIC instrument on 2 April 2004. The field of view is 1.33 x 1.33 arcmin.

For more information and a higher resolution of this image, please click here.

Credits: ESA/NASA and M.A. Guerrero (IAA-CSIC)

Reflecting on XMM-Newton

nobody@flickr.com (europeanspaceagency) — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 02:01:24 -0800

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

Reflection patterns off one of the gold-plated spare mirrors of ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope shows a side of the mission rarely seen.

Captivating images of supernova remnants, stellar explosions and black hole environments are just some of the high-energy phenomena that go hand-in-hand with XMM-Newton.

By contrast, this image shows the journey that light particles from these objects might make on their way to the space telescope’s detectors.

In this artistic shot patterns are created by light reflected in one of the gold-plated mirrors. XMM-Newton’s three telescopes each contain 58 mirrors like this, and are among the most powerful ever developed.

The mirrors are only one millimetre thick and nested inside one another, rather like the layers of a leek. This construction earned the mission its name: X-ray Multi-Mirrors, while also honouring the physicist Sir Isaac Newton.

The mirrors are curved in such a way to ensure that the incoming X-rays are reflected twice and focused onto a detector in a single point.

XMM-Newton was launched on 10 December 1999, exactly 13 years ago today, and is still working well in orbit around Earth.

For more information, please click here.

Credits: ESA/Patrick Dumas/Look at Sciences

Life and death in a star-forming cloud

nobody@flickr.com (europeanspaceagency) — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 07:45:40 -0800

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

Supernova remnant W44 is the focus of this new image created by combining data from ESA’s Herschel and XMM-Newton space observatories. W44 is the vast purple sphere that dominates the left hand side of this image, and measures about 100 light-years across. XMM-Newton data reveal that the remnant is filled with X-ray emission from extremely hot gas. Herschel’s three-colour infrared view comprises PACS 70 and 160 micron and SPIRE 250 micron images. X-ray data from XMM-Newton’s EPIC instrument for W44 only has been added in light and dark blue to represent high- (2–8 keV) and low-energy (1.2–2 keV) X-ray emission, respectively. The field of view is about 1º across. North is towards the bottom left of the image; east is to the top right.

For further information, please click here.

Credits: Herschel: Q. Nguyen Luong & F. Motte, HOBYS Key Program consortium, Herschel SPIRE/PACS/ESA consortia. XMM-Newton: ESA/XMM-Newton

Fire burn and cauldron bubble

nobody@flickr.com (europeanspaceagency) — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 06:51:02 -0700

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

A giant bubble blown by the massive Wolf-Rayet star HD 50896, the pink star in the centre of the image.

X-ray data from XMM-Newton’s EPIC camera are shown in blue, while optical images were acquired using the Michigan Curtis Schmidt Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) and presented in red (H-alpha) and green (OIII).

The bubble, known as S 308, is about 60 light-years across and is located 5000 light-years away in the constellation of Canis Major.

Credits: ESA, J. Toala & M. Guerrero (IAA-CSIC), Y.-H. Chu & R. Gruendl (UIUC), S. Arthur (CRyA–UNAM), R. Smith (NOAO/CTIO), S. Snowden (NASA/GSFC) and G. Ramos-Larios (IAM)

Aftermath of a stellar explosion

nobody@flickr.com (europeanspaceagency) — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 04:09:25 -0700

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

Composite optical and X-ray picture of supernova remnant G272.2-03.2, taken on 11 December 2001 by ESA’s XMM-Newton. The remnant was discovered in 1994 with ROSAT. The image is 40 x 40 arc minutes.

For more information, please click here.

Credits: XMM-Newton/ESA

A magnetic monster’s dual personality

nobody@flickr.com (europeanspaceagency) — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 05:50:31 -0700

europeanspaceagency posted a video:

Is it a magnetar or is it a pulsar? A second member of a rare breed of dead, spinning star has been identified thanks to an armada of space-based X-ray telescopes, including ESA’s XMM-Newton. Its curious behaviour is illustrated in this animation.

Magnetars are a type of neutron star, the dead cores of massive stars that have collapsed in on themselves after burning up all their fuel and exploding as dramatic supernovas. They typically display bright, persistent X-ray emission and the most intense magnetic fields known in the Universe. Pulsars meanwhile are spinning neutron stars with much lower magnetic fields than magnetars that appear to pulse radio waves as they rotate rapidly. The pulses are seen when beams of radiation rotate through our line of sight from Earth, rather like the sweeping beam of a lighthouse. The recently discovered star appears to be a hybrid of these two stellar breeds: the spinning stellar skeleton appears as a pulsar while hiding an intense internal magnetic field much like a magnetar. The internal field is many times stronger than its external magnetic field, leading to its entry into the new class of ‘low-field magnetars’. As this animation illustrates, the turbulent interior arises as a result of twisted magnetic field lines. As the field lines unwind, energy is released as a steady burst of X-rays through fractures in the star’s ‘crust’.

For further information, Please click here

Credits: ESA-C.Carreau

A New View of an Icon: The Eagle Nebula

nobody@flickr.com (europeanspaceagency) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 05:18:31 -0800

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

Combining almost opposite ends of the electromagnetic spectrum, this composite of the Herschel in far-infrared and XMM-Newton’s X-ray images shows how the hot young stars detected by the X-ray observations are sculpting and interacting with the surrounding ultra-cool gas and dust, which, at only a few degrees above absolute zero, is the critical material for star formation itself. Both wavelengths would be blocked by Earth’s atmosphere, so are critical to our understanding of the lifecycle of stars

Credits: far-infrared: ESA/Herschel/PACS/SPIRE/Hill, Motte, HOBYS Key Programme Consortium; X-ray: ESA/XMM-Newton/EPIC/XMM-Newton-SOC/Boulanger