ESA Science & Technology - News Archive
News archive
News archive
Scientists have developed a technique to use quasars – powerful sources driven by supermassive black holes at the centre of galaxies – to study the Universe's history and composition. This approach promises to become an important tool to constrain the properties of our Universe.
Published: 3 December 2015
ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory has revealed three massive filaments of hot gas flowing towards a cluster of galaxies, uncovering a portion of the cosmic skeleton that pervades the entire Universe.
Published: 2 December 2015
Astronomers have detected the last 'cry' from a star that passed too close to the central black hole of its host galaxy and was being destroyed and 'swallowed' – a phenomenon known as a tidal disruption event.
Published: 21 October 2015
Proposals are solicited for observations with XMM-Newton in response to the fifteenth Announcement of Opportunity, AO-15, issued 25 August 2015. This AO covers the period May 2016 to April 2017 and is open to proposers from all over the world.
Published: 25 August 2015
This new image of powerful remnants of dead stars and their mighty action on the surrounding gas from ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory reveals some of the most intense processes taking place at the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way.
Published: 20 August 2015
Astronomers have discovered that the winds from supermassive black holes at the centre of galaxies are blasted out in all directions. This new finding was made possible by observations with ESA's XMM-Newton and NASA's NuSTAR X-ray telescopes and it supports the picture of black holes having a significant impact on star formation of their host...
Published: 19 February 2015
First impressions can be deceptive - astronomers have used ESA's X-ray satellite XMM-Newton to find a massive black hole hungrily feeding within a tiny dwarf galaxy, despite there being no hint of this black hole from optical observations.
Published: 19 December 2014
Proposals are solicited for observations with XMM-Newton in response to the fourteenth Announcement of Opportunity, AO-14, issued 26 August 2014. This AO covers the period May 2015 to April 2016 and is open to proposers from all over the world.
Published: 26 August 2014
ESA's XMM-Newton observatory has helped to uncover how the Universe's first stars ended their lives in giant explosions.
Published: 11 July 2014
The Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) and the Russian Academy of Sciences have nominated Nanda Rea, an assistant professor at the Institute of Space Sciences (CSIC-IEEC) in Barcelona and the Anton Pannekoek Institute (API) at the University of Amsterdam, for a prestigious Zeldovich Medal.
Published: 26 June 2014
Astronomers using ESA and NASA high-energy observatories have discovered a tantalising clue that hints at an elusive ingredient of our Universe: dark matter.
Published: 24 June 2014
A composite view of the Bullet Group reveals its constituents and their peculiar arrangement. The hot gas, imaged with ESA's XMM-Newton, is separated from the rest of the group's mass, which consists of galaxies as well as dark matter.
Published: 6 June 2014
XMM-Newton has revealed a unique star. It is a celestial chimera with the body of a normal massive star yet the magnetic field of a dead, stellar dwarf. This makes it a singular object among the billions of known stars.
Published: 3 June 2014
A pair of supermassive black holes in orbit around one another have been spotted by XMM-Newton. This is the first time such a pair have been seen in an ordinary galaxy. They were discovered because they ripped apart a star when the space observatory happened to be looking in their direction.
Published: 22 April 2014
Astronomers studying a black hole in our Galaxy with ESA's XMM-Newton observatory have made a surprising discovery about the cocktail of particles that are ejected from its surroundings.
Published: 13 November 2013
For the first time, astronomers have caught a pulsar in a crucial transitional phase that explains the origin of the mysterious millisecond pulsars. The discovery was made possible by the coordinated efforts of ESA's two missions that scan the high-energy sky: INTEGRAL and XMM-Newton.
Published: 25 September 2013
Proposals are solicited for observations with XMM-Newton in response to the thirteenth Announcement of Opportunity, AO-13, issued 27 August 2013. This AO covers the period May 2014 to April 2015 and is open to proposers from all over the world. The deadline for receipt of proposals is Friday, 11 October 2013, 12:00 UT.
Published: 27 August 2013
Astronomers using ESA's XMM-Newton have measured the magnetic field in a small surface feature of a magnetar for the first time. Until now, only the dipolar magnetic field of magnetars had been measured. With a new technique, the astronomers have revealed a strong, localised magnetic field in the magnetar that had the lowest dipolar field of all.
Published: 14 August 2013
The release of a new catalogue from the XMM-Newton space telescope provides an unprecedented cosmic X-ray library for the exploration of the extreme Universe. The third XMM-Newton Serendipitous Source Catalogue (3XMM-DR4) contains more than half a million sources.
Published: 23 July 2013
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.
Published: 19 March 2013
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