XMM-Newton News Archive - Year 2016

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X-ray burst 19-Dec-2016:
False-colour view of galaxy M81
An important part of studying celestial objects is understanding and removing the background noise. The image presented here was created to demonstrate the power of software tools used to analyse observations by ESA's XMM-Newton of large objects like galaxies, clusters of galaxies and supernova remnants.
Further details on ESA's Space in Images portal.

X-ray burst 19-Oct-2016:
Mysterious Cosmic Objects Erupting in X-rays Discovered
Astronomers have found a pair of extraordinary cosmic objects that dramatically burst in X-rays. This discovery, obtained with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton observatory, may represent a new class of explosive events found in space.
Further details on NASA's Chandra pages.

Wandering Black Hole 05-Oct-2016:
X-ray Telescopes Find Evidence for Wandering Black Hole
Astronomers have used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray observatory to discover an extremely luminous, variable X-ray source located outside the center of its parent galaxy. This peculiar object could be a wandering black hole that came from a small galaxy falling into a larger one.
Further details on NASA's pages.

Galaxy Cluster 30-Aug-2016:
Record-Breaking Galaxy Cluster Discovered
A new record for the most distant galaxy cluster has been set using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory,  ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory and a large group of other telescopes in space and on the ground. This galaxy cluster may have been caught right after birth, a brief, but important stage of evolution never seen before.
Further details on NASA's Chandra pages.

Milky Way 29-Aug-2016:
XMM-Newton reveals the Milky Way's explosive past
A giant bubble surrounding the centre of the Milky Way shows that six million years ago our Galaxy's supermassive black hole was ablaze with furious energy. It also shines a light on the hiding place of the Galaxy's so-called 'missing' matter.
Further details on ESA's Science & Technology pages.

RPS 23-Aug-2016:
XMM-Newton 16th Announcement of Opportunity (AO-16)
The XMM-Newton Sixteenth Announcement of Opportunity is now open and observing proposals may be submitted.
The deadline is 7 October 2016, 12:00 UT.

Further details here on our XMM-Newton SOC website.

Milky Way Halo 25-Jul-2016:
Astronomers Discover Dizzying Spin of the Milky Way Galaxy’s "Halo"
Astronomers at the University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA) discovered for the first time that the hot gas in the halo of the Milky Way galaxy is spinning in the same direction and at comparable speed as the galaxy's disk, which contains our stars, planets, gas, and dust.
Further details on NASA's portal.

Black Hole 12-Jul-2016:
Gravitational vortex provides new way to study matter close to a black hole
ESA's orbiting X-ray observatory, XMM-Newton, has proved the existence of a 'gravitational vortex' around a black hole. The discovery, aided by NASA's NuSTAR mission, solves a mystery that has eluded astronomers for more than 30 years and will allow them to map the behaviour of matter very close to black holes.
Further details on ESA's Science & Technology pages.

Accretion Disk around Black Hole 22-Jun-2016:
X-ray Echoes of a Shredded Star Provide Close-up of 'Killer' Black Hole
Some 3.9 billion years ago in the heart of a distant galaxy, the intense tidal pull of a monster black hole shredded a star that passed too close.
Further details on NASA's web pages.

Wind Nebula 21-Jun-2016:
Astronomers Find the First "Wind Nebula" Around a Magnetar
Astronomers have discovered a vast cloud of high-energy particles called a wind nebula around a rare ultra-magnetic neutron star, or magnetar, for the first time.
Further details on the NASA portal and on Science Daily's pages.

High-Speed winds 28-Apr-2016:
Powerful winds spotted from mysterious X-ray binaries
ESA's XMM-Newton has discovered gas streaming away at a quarter of the speed of light from very bright X-ray binaries in two nearby galaxies.
Further details on ESA's Space Science pages.

Spinning Neutron Star 31-Mar-2016:
Found: Andromeda's first spinning neutron star
Decades of searching in the Milky Way's nearby 'twin' galaxy Andromeda have finally paid off, with the discovery of an elusive breed of stellar corpse, a neutron star, by ESA's XMM-Newton space telescope.
Further details on ESA's Space Science pages.

Winds from Spiral Galaxy 14-Jan-2016:
A Milky Way twin swept by an ultra-fast X-ray wind
ESA's XMM-Newton has found a wind of high-speed gas streaming from the centre of a bright spiral galaxy like our own that may be reducing its ability to produce new stars.
Further details on ESA's Space Science pages.