XMM-Newton Latest News

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For older news stories regarding XMM-Newton please visit the News Archive
19-Mar-2013:
Black Hole-Star pair orbiting at dizzying speed
ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescope has helped to identify a star and a black hole that orbit each other at the dizzying rate of once every 2.4 hours, smashing the previous record by nearly an hour.
Further details on the ESA Space Science pages.
27-Feb-2013:
Speedy black hole holds galaxy's history
A rapidly rotating supermassive black hole has been found in the heart of a spiral galaxy by ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s NuSTAR space observatories, opening a new window into how galaxies grow.
Further details on the ESA Space Science pages.
11-Feb-2013:
X-raying the Eskimo
Peering inside the fur-lined hood of the Eskimo Nebula with ESA’s XMM-Newton space observatory reveals a hot face of X-ray-emitting gas blazing at 2 million degrees.
Further details on the ESA Space Science pages.
05-Feb-2013:
Massive stellar winds are made of tiny pieces
ESA's XMM-Newton space observatory has completed the most detailed study ever of the fierce wind from a giant star, showing for the first time that it is not a uniform breeze but is fragmented into hundreds of thousands of pieces.
Further details on the ESA Space Science pages.
24-Jan-2013:
Baffling pulsar leaves astronomers in the dark
New observations of a highly variable pulsar using ESA's XMM-Newton are perplexing astronomers. Monitoring this pulsar simultaneously in X-rays and radio waves, astronomers have revealed that this source, whose radio emission is known to 'switch on and off' periodically, exhibits the same behaviour, but in reverse, when observed at X-ray wavelengths. It is the first time that a switching X-ray emission has been detected from a pulsar, and the properties of this emission are unexpectedly puzzling.
Further details on the ESA Science & Technology pages.
18-Dec-2012:
EPIC MOS1 Event of Revolution 2382
At about 06:51 hrs.UT on 11 December 2012, during XMM-Newton revolution 2382, an event was registered in the focal plane of the EPIC MOS1 instrument.
Further details on the XMM-Newton SOC pages.
14-Dec-2012:
X-ray astronomers celebrate 50 years of observing the warmest sky
Only 50 years ago X-ray astronomy did not exist. The scientific community celebrates this year the first observation, in 1962, of a cosmic x-ray source apart from the Sun. ESA's x-ray observatory XMM-Newton has had a key part in the flood of breakthroughs that followed.
Further details on the XMM-Newton SOC pages.
12-Dec-2012:
Greedy black hole discovered in Andromeda
Studying the Andromeda galaxy with ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray space observatory, astronomers have discovered a new bright X-ray source that hosts a stellar-mass black hole accreting mass at a very high rate.
Further details on the ESA Science & Technology pages.
15-Nov-2012:
Born-again star foreshadows fate of solar system
Astronomers have found evidence for a dying Sun-like star coming briefly back to life after casting its gassy shells out into space, mimicking the possible fate our own Solar System faces in a few billion years. This new picture of the planetary nebula Abell 30 is a composite of visible images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and X-ray data from ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s Chandra space telescopes.
Further details on the ESA Space Science pages.
14-Nov-2012:
The curious shape of a supernova remnant in a star-forming cloud
Data from two ESA missions combine in a new view of the peculiar supernova remnant W44. The filamentary shell-like structure, detected by the Herschel Space Observatory at far-infrared wavelengths, is filled with hot gas that shines brightly in X-rays, as seen by the XMM-Newton X-ray Observatory. This composite image highlights how the complex morphology of this remnant has been shaped by its interaction with its parent molecular cloud, the star-forming region W48.
Further details on the ESA Science & Technology pages.
09-Nov-2012:
Astronomers develop new method to determine neutron star mass
Astronomers have used INTEGRAL and XMM-Newton to look into the neutron star in IGR J17252-3616, a highly obscured X-ray binary system. The data show how the neutron star is substantially deflecting the flow of the accreted material. Comparison with numerical simulations provides an estimate of the neutron star's mass, suggesting a new method to determine the mass of these extremely dense, exotic objects.
Further details on the ESA Science & Technology pages.
29-Oct-2012:
Fire burn and cauldron bubble
The cosmic cauldron has brewed up a Halloween trick in the form of a ghostly face that glows in X-rays, as seen by ESA's XMM-Newton space telescope. The eerie entity is a bubble bursting with the fiery stellar wind of a 'live fast, die young' star.
Further details on the ESA Space Science pages.