XMM-Newton reveals the origin of elements in galaxy clusters

[Whitters]

Deep observations of two X-ray bright clusters of galaxies with ESA's XMM-Newton satellite allowed a group of international astronomers to measure their chemical composition with an unprecedented accuracy. Knowing the chemical composition of galaxy clusters is of crucial importance to understanding the origin of chemical elements in the Universe.

Full story:
http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEM94Q8ATME_index_0.html

[Rick]

Astronomers have caught three neutron stars in the act of distorting space-time, just as Einstein predicted. Bendy space-time has been seen around black holes before, but this is the first time astronomers have seen it around any other body.

Sudip Bhattacharyya and Tod Strohmayer, both of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, turned the XMM-Newton observatory to a binary system called Serpens-1, whose neutron star has a disc of hot iron atoms whirling around just above its surface at around 40 per cent of the speed of light.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/28/bendy_spacetime/

[Rick]

The largest ever catalogue of X-ray sources has been released by the team behind the XMM-Newton observatory. The newly released data-set contains more than a quarter of a million entries.

Professor Mike Watson, the XMM-Newton Survey Science principal investigator from the University of Leicester, explains: "The 2XMM catalogue is the largest compilation of X-ray-emitting objects ever made, containing nearly a quarter of a million entries. This has been possible because of the longevity of the XMM-Newton mission and the highly sensitive instruments onboard the satellite."

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/10/xmm_catalogue/

[Rick]

ESA's XMM-Newton finds huge filament of missing matter
Veteran X-ray telescope discovery shows that... phew, current model of the cosmos still works

Astronomers have found a filament of hot gas, ten times as massive as our galaxy, that they reckon could explain where at least some of the universe's "missing" matter might be lurking.

A third of "normal" matter in the universe is "missing." It's needed to make scientists' models of the cosmos operate as postulated, but has proven difficult to find. The material is the ordinary stuff known as baryonic matter (baryons include protons and neutrons and other subatomic particles that make up the visible universe – not to be confused with dark matter or dark energy.) Physicists put the mass ratio of dark matter to baryonic matter at 5 to 1, meaning only approximately 15 or 16 percent of matter in the universe is normal matter. And according to a recent Nature Astronomy paper, only a "small fraction of baryons are in stars and the interstellar medium within galaxies."

More: https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/19/esas_xmmnewton_finds_filaments/