XMM-Newton image of the COSMOS field
Date: 02 December 2015
Copyright: ESA/XMM-Newton/G. Hasinger, N. Cappelluti, and the XMM-COSMOS collaboration
This image shows a patch of sky from the COSMOS survey, as viewed by XMM-Newton. COSMOS is a project studying how galaxies form and evolve, gathering observations using a variety of ground- and space-based telescopes.
This image features about two thousand supermassive black holes – the small point sources dotted across the frame – which are actively devouring matter from their surroundings. There are also over a hundred galaxy clusters, the larger (mainly red and yellow) blobs in this image.
The image combines data collected by the EPIC instrument on board XMM-Newton at energies from 0.5 to 2 keV (shown in red), 2 to 4.5 keV (shown in green) and 4.5 to 10 keV (shown in blue). The observations were taken between 2003 and 2005, and the image spans 1.4 degrees on each side, corresponding to almost three times the diameter of the full Moon.
