Multicoloured view of supernova remnant RCW 86

Credit: ESA/XMM-Newton & NASA/Chandra (X-ray); NASA/WISE/Spitzer (Infrared)

Most celestial events unfold over thousands of years or more, making it impossible to follow their evolution on human timescales.

Supernovas are notable exceptions, the powerful stellar explosions that make stars as bright as an entire galaxy for several days.

Although they are very rare, only a few such explosions take place every century in a typical galaxy, supernovas can be seen with the naked eye if they are reasonably nearby.

In fact, when supernovas were discovered they were thought to be new stars appearing in the sky, 'nova' means new in Latin.

Astronomers have recorded supernovas long before a theoretical understanding of these events as stellar explosions was developed in the 20th century.

The most ancient documented record dates back to 185 AD, when Chinese astronomers saw a 'guest star' that remained visible for several months, in the vicinity of the two stars Alpha and Beta Centauri.

The material ejected during these explosions sweeps up gas and dust from the surroundings, creating picturesque supernova remnants that can be observed long after the explosion.

Modern astronomers believe that the object shown in this image, the supernova remnant RCW 86, is what remains of the supernova that was discovered in 185 AD.

The blue and green glow at the edges of the bubble represents X-ray emission from hot gas, heated to millions of degrees by shock waves generated after the explosion.

The diffuse red glow marks infrared emission from warm dust in the interstellar medium around RCW 86.

Sprinkled across the image, in yellow, are young stars that shine brightly at infrared wavelengths.

This image combines X-ray data from ESA's XMM-Newton and NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (combined to form the blue and green colours) with infrared observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer - WISE (yellow and red).

The supernova remnant RCW 86 is some 8000 light-years away.

ESA XMM-Newton: Inexplicable signal provides clue about dark matter

A sketch (not to scale) showing axions (blue) streaming out from the Sun, converting in the Earth's magnetic field (red) into X-rays (orange), which are then detected by the XMM-Newton observatory. 

Credit: University of Leicester

Cutting-edge paper by Professor George Fraser, who tragically died in March this year,and colleagues at the University of Leicester provides first potential indication of direct detection of Dark Matter, something that has been a mystery in physics for over 30 years.

Space scientists at the University of Leicester have detected a curious signal in the X-ray sky – one that provides a tantalising insight into the nature of mysterious Dark Matter.

The Leicester team has found what appears to be a signature of 'axions', predicted 'Dark Matter' particle candidates, something that has been a puzzle to science for years.

In a study being published on Monday 20 October in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the University of Leicester scientists describe their finding of a signal which has no conventional explanation.

As first author Professor George Fraser, who sadly died in March of this year, wrote: "The direct detection of dark matter has preoccupied physics for over thirty years."

Dark Matter, a kind of invisible mass of unknown origin, cannot be seen directly with telescopes, but is instead inferred from its gravitational effects on ordinary matter and on light.

Dark Matter is believed to make up 85% of the matter of the Universe.

"The X-ray background, the sky, after the bright X-ray sources are removed - appears to be unchanged whenever you look at it," explained Dr. Andy Read, also from the University of Leicester Department of Physics and Astronomy and now leading the paper.

"However, we have discovered a seasonal signal in this X-ray background, which has no conventional explanation, but is consistent with the discovery of axions."

This result was found through an extensive study of almost the entire archive of data from the European Space Agency's X-ray observatory, XMM-Newton, which will celebrate its 15th year in orbit this December.

Previous searches for axions, notably at CERN, and with other spacecraft in Earth orbit, have so far proved unsuccessful.

As Professor Fraser explains in the paper: "It appears plausible that axions, Dark Matter particle candidates, are indeed produced in the core of the Sun and do indeed convert to X-rays in the magnetic field of the Earth."

It is predicted that the X-ray signal due to axions will be greatest when looking through the sunward side of the magnetic field because this is where the field is strongest.

Dr. Read concludes: "These exciting discoveries, in George's final paper, could be truly ground-breaking, potentially opening a window to new physics, and could have huge implications, not only for our understanding of the true X-ray sky, but also for identifying the Dark Matter that dominates the mass content of the cosmos."

President of the Royal Astronomical Society Professor Martin Barstow, who is Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Head of the College of Science & Engineering and Professor of Astrophysics & Space Science at the University of Leicester said: "This is an amazing result. If confirmed, it will be first direct detection and identification of the elusive dark matter particles and will have a fundamental impact on our theories of the Universe."

More information: "Potential solar axion signatures in X-ray observations with the XMM-Newton observatory," G. W. Fraser, A. M. Read, S. Sembay, J. A. Carter, E. Schyns, Accepted (08/09/14) for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (mnras.oxfordjournals.org/), Paper can be found on arXiv : arxiv.org/abs/1403.2436.

Chandra & XMM-Newton Image: Detailed X-ray view of Puppis A supernova

The destructive results of a powerful supernova explosion reveal themselves in a delicate tapestry of X-ray light, as seen in this image from NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton.

Image credit: NASA /CXC /IAFE /G.Dubner et al & ESA /XMM-Newton

The image shows the remains of a supernova that would have been witnessed on Earth about 3,700 years ago.

The remnant is called Puppis A, and is around 7,000 light years away and about 10 light years across.

This image provides the most complete and detailed X-ray view of Puppis A ever obtained, made by combining a mosaic of different Chandra and XMM-Newton observations.

Low-energy X-rays are shown in red, medium-energy X-rays are in green and high energy X-rays are coloured blue.

These observations act as a probe of the gas surrounding Puppis A, known as the interstellar medium.

The complex appearance of the remnant shows that Puppis A is expanding into an interstellar medium that probably has a knotty structure.

ESA XMM-Newton

Supernova explosions forge the heavy elements that can provide the raw material from which future generations of stars and planets will form.

Studying how supernova remnants expand into the galaxy and interact with other material provides critical clues into our own origins.

A paper describing these results was published in the July 2013 issue of Astronomy and Astrophysics and is available online.

The first author is Gloria Dubner from the Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio in Buenos Aires in Argentina.

ESA XMM-Newton: Cosmic Collision in the Bullett Group

Composite image taken by ESA's XMM-Newton of the Bullet Group showing galaxies, hot gas (shown in pink) and dark matter (indicated in blue). 

Credit: ESA / XMM-Newton / F. Gastaldello (INAF/IASF, Milano, Italy) / CFHTLS

Galaxies are not as isolated as they at first glance may seem; on a cosmic scale they congregate in clumps along with dark matter and hot gas.

The colourful blob in this new composite image, based on data from several telescopes including ESA's XMM-Newton, is the group of galaxies known as the Bullet Group.

Its components appear to be clearly separated, with the hot gas partitioned from the rest of the mass within the group.

This is the smallest object ever found to show such an effect, which was caused by a merger in the group's past.

ESA's XMM-Newton: Pulsar encased in a supernova bubble

Credit: ESA /XMM-Newton /L. Oskinova /M. Guerrero; CTIO /R. Gruendl / Y.H. Chu

Massive stars end their lives with a bang: exploding as spectacular supernovas, they release huge amounts of mass and energy into space.

These explosions sweep up any surrounding material, creating bubble remnants that expand into interstellar space.

At the heart of bubbles like these are small, dense neutron stars or black holes, the remains of what once shone brightly as a star.

Since supernova-carved bubbles shine for only a few tens of thousands of years before dissolving, it is rare to come across neutron stars or black holes that are still enclosed within their expanding shell.

Pulsar SXP 1062

This image captures such an unusual scene, featuring both a strongly magnetised, rotating neutron star – known as a pulsar – and its cosmic cloak, the remains of the explosion that generated it.

Small Magellanic Cloud

This pulsar, named SXP 1062, lies in the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, one of the satellite galaxies of our Milky Way galaxy.

It is an object known as an X-ray pulsar: it hungrily gobbles up material from a nearby companion star and burps off X-rays as it does so.

In the future, this scene may become even more dramatic, as SXP 1062 has a massive companion star that has not yet exploded as a supernova.

Most pulsars whirl around incredibly quickly, spinning many times per second.

However, by exploring the expanding bubble around this pulsar and estimating its age, astronomers have noticed something intriguing: SXP 1062 seems to be rotating far too slowly for its age. It is actually one of the slowest pulsars known.

While the cause of this weird sluggishness is still a mystery, one explanation may be that the pulsar has an unusually strong magnetic field, which would slow the rotation.

The diffuse blue glow at the centre of the bubble in this image represents X-ray emission from both the pulsar and the hot gas that fills the expanding bubble.

The other fuzzy blue objects visible in the background are extragalactic X-ray sources.

This image combines X-ray data from ESA's XMM-Newton (shown in blue) with optical observations from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.

The optical data were obtained using two special filters that reveal the glow of oxygen (shown in green) and hydrogen (shown in red).

The size of the image is equivalent to a distance of 457 light-years on a side.

This image was first published in 2011.

More information: "Discovery of a Be/X-ray pulsar binary and associated supernova remnant in the Wing of the Small Magellanic Cloud." V. Hénault-Brunet, L. M. Oskinova, M. A. Guerrero, et al. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters 420 (1) L13 (2012) DOI: 10.1111/j.1745-3933.2011.01183.x

ESA XMM-Newton: Unique pair of supermassive black holes discovered

Artist’s impression of a pair of black holes. 

One of them is accreting the 'debris' of the disrupted star, while the second is temporarily interrupting the stream of gas toward the other black hole. 

Credit: ESA /C. Carreau

A pair of supermassive black holes in orbit around one another have been discovered by an international research team including Stefanie Komossa from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany. This is the first time such a pair could be found in an ordinary galaxy.

Stefanie Komossa

They were discovered because they ripped apart a star when ESA's space observatory XMM-Newton happened to be looking in their direction.

The findings are published in the May 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal, and appeared online today at the astrophysics preprint server.

Most massive galaxies in the universe are thought to harbor at least one supermassive black hole at their center.

Two supermassive black holes are the smoking gun that the galaxy has merged with another.

Thus, finding binary supermassive black holes can tell astronomers about how galaxies evolved into their present-day shapes and sizes.

To date, only a few candidates for close binary supermassive black holes have been found. All are in active galaxies where they are constantly ripping gas clouds apart, in the prelude to crushing them out of existence.

In the process of destruction, the gas is heated so much that it shines at many wavelengths, including X-rays. This gives the galaxy an unusually bright center, and leads to it being called active.

Fukun Liu

The new discovery, reported by Fukun Liu from Peking University in China, and colleagues, is important because it is the first to be found in a galaxy that is not active.

"There might be a whole population of quiescent galaxies that host binary black holes in their centers," says co-author Stefanie Komossa, Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie, Bonn, Germany.

But finding them is a difficult task because in quiescent galaxies, there are no gas clouds feeding the black holes, and so the cores of these galaxies are truly dark.

The only hope that the astronomers have is to be looking in the right direction at the moment one of the black holes goes to work, and rips a star to pieces. Such an occurrence is called a 'tidal disruption event.'

As the star is pulled apart by the gravity of the black hole, it gives out a flare of X-rays.

In an active galaxy, the black hole is continuously fed by gas clouds. In a quiescent galaxy, the black hole is fed by tidal disruption events that occur sporadically and are impossible to predict.

So, to increase the chances of catching such an event, researchers use ESA's X-ray observatory, XMM-Newton, in a novel way.

ESA's X-ray observatory, XMM-Newton

Artist's impression of XMM-Newton spacecraft in orbit around the Earth. 

The X-ray emission from galaxy SDSS J120136.02+300305.5 was detected in slew modus of the space observatory. 

Credit: ESA /D. Ducros

Usually, the observatory collects data from designated targets, one at a time.

Once it completes an observation, it slews to the next.

The trick is that during this movement, XMM-Newton keeps the instruments turned on and recording.

Effectively this surveys the sky in a random pattern, producing data that can be analyzed for unknown or unexpected sources of X-rays.

On 10 June 2010, a tidal disruption event was spotted by XMM-Newton in galaxy SDSS J120136.02+300305.5, approximately 2 billion light-years away.

NASA's Swift satellite

Komossa and her colleagues were scanning the data for such events and scheduled follow-up observations just days later with XMM-Newton and NASA's Swift satellite.

The galaxy was still spilling X-rays into space.

It looked exactly like a tidal disruption event caused by a supermassive black hole but as they tracked the slowly fading emission day after day something strange happened.

The X-rays fell below detectable levels between days 27 and 48 after the discovery. Then they re-appeared and continued to follow a more expected fading rate, as if nothing had happened.

Now, thanks to Fukun Liu, this behaviour can be explained. "This is exactly what you would expect from a pair of supermassive black holes orbiting one another," says Liu.

More information: "A milliparsec supermassive black hole binary candidate in the galaxy SDSS J120136.02+300305.5," by F. K. Liu, Shuo Li, and S. Komossa, 2014, Astrophysical Journal, Volume 786, Article 103 (May 10). DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/786/2/103 . Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/1404.4933

Chandra and XMM-Newton: Direct measurement of distant black hole's spin

Multiple images of a distant quasar known as RX J1131-1231 are visible in this combined view from Chandra (pink) and Hubble (red, green, and blue). 

Credit: NASA/CXC/Univ of Michigan/R.C.Reis et al; Optical: NASA/STSc

Astronomers have used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency's (ESA) XMM-Newton to show a supermassive black hole six billion light years from Earth is spinning extremely rapidly.

This first direct measurement of the spin of such a distant black hole is an important advance for understanding how black holes grow over time.

Chandra X-ray Observatory

Black holes are defined by just two simple characteristics: mass and spin.

While astronomers have long been able to measure black hole masses very effectively, determining their spins has been much more difficult.

In the past decade, astronomers have devised ways of estimating spins for black holes at distances greater than several billion light-years away, meaning we see the region around black holes as they were billions of years ago.

However, determining the spins of these remote black holes involves several steps that rely on one another.

Rubens Reis

"We want to be able to cut out the middle man, so to speak, of determining the spins of black holes across the universe," said Rubens Reis of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who led a paper describing this result that was published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Reis and his colleagues determined the spin of the supermassive black hole that is pulling in surrounding gas, producing an extremely luminous quasar known as RX J1131-1231 (RX J1131 for short).

ESA XMM-Newton

Because of fortuitous alignment, the distortion of space-time by the gravitational field of a giant elliptical galaxy along the line of sight to the quasar acts as a gravitational lens that magnifies the light from the quasar.

Gravitational lensing, first predicted by Einstein, offers a rare opportunity to study the innermost region in distant quasars by acting as a natural telescope and magnifying the light from these sources.

Mark Reynolds

"Because of this gravitational lens, we were able to get very detailed information on the X-ray spectrum – that is, the amount of X-rays seen at different energies – from RX J1131," said co-author Mark Reynolds also of Michigan.

"This in turn allowed us to get a very accurate value for how fast the black hole is spinning."

The X-rays are produced when a swirling accretion disk of gas and dust that surrounds the black hole creates a multimillion-degree cloud, or corona near the black hole.

X-rays from this corona reflect off the inner edge of the accretion disk.

The strong gravitational forces near the black hole alter the reflected X-ray spectrum. The larger the change in the spectrum, the closer the inner edge of the disk must be to the black hole.

More information: Paper: dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature13031

ESA XMM-Newton: Taking the pulse of a supermassive black hole

This artist's concept depicts a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy. Image: NASA

Rare heartbeat-like pulsations detected from a supermassive black hole may grant scientists better insight into these exotic objects, according to two University of Alabama astronomers who co-authored a recent scientific article on the discovery.

Drs. Dacheng Lin, a post-doctoral researcher, and Jimmy Irwin, an assistant professor in UA's physics and astronomy department, co-wrote, along with three French scientists, an article about this black hole, with a mass about 100,000 times that of the sun, that published in a recent issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.

"Such signals from supermassive black holes are very important for understanding the link between black holes across mass scale, but they have proved very difficult to find," Lin said.

"Only two cases were discovered before, and our signal is five times stronger than those two cases."

The scientists used data provided by the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton space observatory in their analysis.

This black hole is 1.7 billion light years away from Earth at the center of a distant galaxy, the UA scientists said.

The black hole, at the time of observation, was "eating" matter at near the maximum rate, Lin said. The UA scientists have requested additional observation time by XMM-Newton in an attempt to better understand why this black hole is eating so much matter.

"One interesting possibility is a nearby star happened to be wandering too closely to the black hole," Lin said, "so the star is torn apart by the black hole and a lot of gas becomes available to fall onto the black hole."

The origin of the pulsation, or "quasi-periodic X-ray oscillation" as scientists refer to it, is difficult to identify, Lin said. One explanation is that as the matter falls toward the black hole, a flattened disk forms.

The disk produces high-energy X-rays. As the disc structure changes cyclically due to eating so much matter, so does the intensity of the X-rays streaming from it.

"Such oscillations are common in black holes with masses less than 20 times that of the sun, but are rarely seen in supermassive black holes," Lin said.

"Black holes are one of the most exotic objects in the universe, and it is so compact and the gravity around it so strong that many interesting physical phenomena, such as the heartbeat-like X-ray signal discovered here, can happen."

The discovery published in the Oct. 10 edition of Astrophysical Letters.

ESA XMM-Newton: Capturing black hole spin could further understanding of galaxy growth

Artist's impression of a supermassive black hole at the center surrounded by matter flowing onto the black hole in what is termed an accretion disk. 

Also shown is an outflowing jet of energetic particles, believed to be powered by the black hole's spin. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Astronomers have found a new way of measuring the spin in supermassive black holes, which could lead to better understanding about how they drive the growth of galaxies.

The scientists at Durham University in the UK publish their work in a paper in the Oxford University Press journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The team of astronomers observed a black hole -- with a mass 10 million times that of our Sun -- at the centre of a spiral galaxy 500 million light years from Earth while it was feeding on the surrounding disc of material that fuels its growth and powers its activity.

By viewing optical, ultra-violet and soft x-rays generated by heat as the black hole fed, they were able to measure how far the disc was from the black hole.

This distance depends on black hole spin as a fast spinning black hole pulls the disc in closer to itself, the researchers said.

Using the distance between the black hole and the disc, the scientists were able to estimate the spin of the black hole.

The scientists said that understanding spin could lead to greater understanding of galaxy growth over billions of years.

Black holes lie at the centres of almost all galaxies, and can spit out incredibly hot particles at high energies that prevent intergalactic gases from cooling and forming new stars in the outer galaxy.

Scientists don't yet understand why the jets are ejected into space, but the Durham experts believe that their power could be linked to the spin of the black hole.

This spin is difficult to measure as it only affects the behaviour of material really close to the black hole.

Chris Done

Lead researcher Professor Chris Done, in the Department of Physics, at Durham University, said: "We know the black hole in the centre of each galaxy is linked to the galaxy as a whole, which is strange because black holes are tiny in relation to the size of a galaxy. This would be like something the size of a large boulder (10m), influencing something the size of Earth."

"Understanding this connection between stars in a galaxy and the growth of a black hole, and vice-versa, is the key to understanding how galaxies form throughout cosmic time."

"If a black hole is spinning it drags space and time with it and that drags the accretion disc, containing the black hole's food, closer towards it. This makes the black hole spin faster, a bit like an ice skater doing a pirouette."

"By being able to measure the distance between the black hole and the accretion disc, we believe we can more effectively measure the spin of black holes."

"Because of this, we hope to be able to understand more about the link between black holes and their galaxies."

The Durham scientists were able to measure the spin of the black hole using soft x-ray, optical and ultra-violet images captured by the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton satellite.

Journal Reference:
C. Done, C. Jin, M. Middleton, M. Ward. A new way to measure supermassive black hole spin in accretion disc-dominated active galaxies. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2013; DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stt1138

ESA X-ray Observatory: Super-dense star is first ever found suddenly slowing its spin

The magnetar 1E 2259+586 shines a brilliant blue-white in this false-colour X-ray image of the CTB 109 supernova remnant, which lies about 10,000 light-years away toward the constellation Cassiopeia. 

CTB 109 is only one of three supernova remnants in our galaxy known to harbor a magnetar. 

X-rays at low, medium and high energies are respectively shown in red, green, and blue in this image created from observations acquired by the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton satellite in 2002. 

Credit: ESA/XMM-Newton /M. Sasaki et al.

One of the densest objects in the universe, a neutron star about 10,000 light years from Earth, has been discovered suddenly putting the brakes on its spinning speed.

The event is a mystery that holds important clues for understanding how matter reacts when it is squeezed more tightly than the density of an atomic nucleus—a state that no laboratory on Earth has achieved.

The discovery by an international team of scientists will be published in the journal Nature on May 30, 2013.

The scientists detected the neutron star's abrupt slow-down with NASA's Swift observatory, a satellite with three telescopes whose science and flight operations are controlled by Penn State from the Mission Operations Center on the University Park campus.

"Because Swift has the ability to regularly measure the spin of this unusual star, we have been able to observe its surprising evolution," said Penn State astronomer Jamie Kennea, a coauthor of the Nature paper.

"This neutron star is doing something completely unexpected. Its speed of rotation has been dropping at an increasingly rapid rate ever since the initial sudden decrease in its spin."

Although astronomers have observed neutron stars suddenly speeding up their spins—an event called a "glitch"—they never before had observed a neutron star suddenly slowing down.

"We've dubbed this event an 'anti-glitch' because it affected this star in exactly the opposite manner of every other clearly identified glitch seen in neutron stars," said co-author Neil Gehrels, the lead researcher on the Swift mission, at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

The star is in the Northern Hemisphere sky in the constellation Cassiopeia.

More Information: Nature, 2013. dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature12159

ESA XMM-Newton: Black hole-star pair orbiting at dizzying speed

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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.

The black hole in this compact pairing, known as MAXI J1659-152, is at least three times more massive than the Sun, while its red dwarf companion star has a mass only 20% that of the Sun. The pair is separated by roughly a million kilometres.

The duo were discovered on 25 September 2010 by NASA's Swift space telescope and were initially thought to be a gamma-ray burst. Later that day, Japan's MAXI telescope on the International Space Station found a bright X-ray source at the same place.

More observations from ground and space telescopes, including XMM-Newton, revealed that the X-rays come from a black hole feeding off material ripped from a tiny companion.

Several regularly-spaced dips in the emission were seen in an uninterrupted 14.5 hour observation with XMM-Newton, caused by the uneven rim of the black hole's accretion disc briefly obscuring the X-rays as the system rotates, its disc almost edge-on along XMM-Newton's line of sight.

From these dips, an orbital period of just 2.4 hours was measured, setting a new record for black hole X-ray binary systems. The previous record-holder, Swift J1753.5-0127, has a period of 3.2 hours.

The black hole and the star orbit their common centre of mass. Because the star is the lighter object, it lies further from this point and has to travel around its larger orbit at a breakneck speed of two million kilometres per hour - it is the fastest moving star ever seen in an X-ray binary system. On the other hand, the black hole orbits at 'only' 150 000 km/h.

"The companion star revolves around the common centre of mass at a dizzying rate, almost 20 times faster than Earth orbits the Sun. You really wouldn't like to be on such a merry-go-round in this Galactic fair!" says lead author Erik Kuulkers of ESA's European Space Astronomy Centre in Spain.

ESA XMM-Newton: Aftermath of a Supernova

Suspended in time and space, the aftermath of a massive star’s dramatic ending in a supernova explosion is captured by ESA’s XMM-Newton space observatory.

Nested knots of hot gas glowing green at X-ray wavelengths – equivalent to millions of degrees celsius – fill the structured central region of this expanding supernova remnant.

Supernova remnants are the glowing fireballs created after a massive star – greater than eight of our Suns – has exhausted its fuel supply and collapses in on itself, ejecting its remaining layers of gas in a blinding explosion.

A neutron star or black hole may remain at the heart of the explosion, obscured by the expanding shell of ejected material that also contains material swept up from the interstellar medium – the space between stars.

In this image, two bright spots at the right edge of the shell are lit up by the interaction of shock waves with the surrounding medium. This supernova remnant is only a few thousand years old – the expansion of the shock will take hundreds of thousands of years to slow down.

By studying supernova remnants at X-ray wavelengths, astronomers can identify the abundance and distribution of different elements forged during the last stages of the star’s life.

This information can provide clues about the mass of the progenitor star and the dynamics of the explosion.

Blue and white specks in and around the remnant are foreground and background stellar objects.

NASA Chandra ESA XMM-Newton Image: 185 AD Supernova

NASA has released a multi-wavelength view of RCW 86, the oldest recorded supernova explosion.

The spectacular image, which combines data captured by four telescopes, depicts the celestial event which Chinese astronomers witnessed in 185 AD.

The mysterious phenomenon, termed as "guest star", remained in the sky for eight months, they had noted.

X-ray input from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton Observatory were combined to create blue and green tinges in the visual which was compiled in October 2011.

The X-rays show the interstellar gas heated to millions of degrees by shockwaves triggered by the supernova.

Depicted in yellow and red, the infrared data gathered by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and WISE, Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer shows the dust emanating at a temperature of several hundred degrees below zero. But this trail of dust is still warmer than the normal dust in the Milky Way galaxy.

After analyzing the combined data, experts arrived at the conclusion that the cause of the explosion was a Type Ia supernova which pushed a dead star (or a white dwarf) beyond the brink of stability when another star dumped material onto its surface.

RCW 86 is located 8,000 light-years away from the Earth and has a diameter of about 85 light-years.

ESA Herschel Image: A New View of the Eagle Nebula

Combining almost opposite ends of the electromagnetic spectrum, this composite of the Herschel in far-infrared and XMM-Newton’s X-ray images shows how the hot young stars detected by the X-ray observations are sculpting and interacting with the surrounding ultra-cool gas and dust, which, at only a few degrees above absolute zero, is the critical material for star formation itself.

Both wavelengths would be blocked by Earth’s atmosphere, so are critical to our understanding of the lifecycle of stars

Credits: far-infrared: ESA/Herschel/PACS/SPIRE/Hill, Motte, HOBYS Key Programme Consortium; X-ray: ESA/XMM-Newton/EPIC/XMM-Newton-SOC/Boulanger

The Eagle Nebula as never seen before. In 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope's 'Pillars of Creation' image of the Eagle Nebula became one of the most iconic images of the 20th century. Now, two of ESA's orbiting observatories have shed new light on this enigmatic star-forming region.

The Eagle Nebula is 6500 light-years away in the constellation of Serpens. It contains a young hot star cluster, NGC6611, visible with modest back-garden telescopes, that is sculpting and illuminating the surrounding gas and dust, resulting in a huge hollowed-out cavity and pillars, each several light-years long.

The Hubble image hinted at new stars being born within the pillars, deeply inside small clumps known as 'evaporating gaseous globules' or EGGs. Owing to obscuring dust, Hubble's visible light picture was unable to see inside and prove that young stars were indeed forming.

The ESA Herschel Space Observatory's new image shows the pillars and the wide field of gas and dust around them. Captured in far-infrared wavelengths, the image allows astronomers to see inside the pillars and structures in the region.

In parallel, a new multi-energy X-ray image from ESA's XMM-Newton telescope shows those hot young stars responsible for carving the pillars.

This 1995 Hubble Space Telescope image of the ‘Pillars of Creation’ is probably the most famous astronomical image of the 20th Century.

Taken in visible light using a combination of SII/H-alpha and OIII filters, it shows a part of the Eagle Nebula where new stars are forming.

The tallest pillar is around 4 light-years high

Credits: NASA/ESA/STScI, Hester & Scowen (Arizona State University)

Combining the new space data with near-infrared images from the European Southern Observatory's (ESO's) Very Large Telescope at Paranal, Chile, and visible-light data from its Max Planck Gesellschaft 2.2m diameter telescope at La Silla, Chile, we see this iconic region of the sky in a uniquely beautiful and revealing way.

In visible wavelengths, the nebula shines mainly due to reflected starlight and hot gas filling the giant cavity, covering the surfaces of the pillars and other dusty structures.

At near-infrared wavelengths, the dust becomes almost transparent and the pillars practically vanish.
In far-infrared, Herschel detects this cold dust and the pillars reappear, this time glowing in their own light.

Intricate tendrils of dust and gas are seen to shine, giving astronomers clues about how it interacts with strong ultraviolet light from the hot stars seen by XMM-Newton.

In 2001, Very Large Telescope near-infrared images had shown only a small minority of the EGGs were likely to contain stars being born.

However, Herschel's image makes it possible to search for young stars over a much wider region and thus come to a much fuller understanding of the creative and destructive forces inside the Eagle Nebula.

Earlier mid-infrared images from ESA's Infrared Space Observatory and NASA's Spitzer, and the new XMM-Newton data, have led astronomers to suspect that one of the massive, hot stars in NGC6611 may have exploded in a supernova 6000 years ago, emitting a shockwave that destroyed the pillars.

However, because of the distance of the Eagle Nebula, we won't see this happen for several hundred years yet.

Powerful ground-based telescopes continue to provide astonishing views of our Universe, but images in far-infrared, mid-infrared and X-ray wavelengths are impossible to obtain owing to the absorbing effects of Earth's atmosphere.

Space-based observatories such as ESA's Herschel and XMM-Newton help to peel back that veil and see the full beauty of the Universe across the electromagnetic spectrum.

With regions like the Eagle Nebula, combining all of these observations helps astronomers to understand the complex yet amazing lifecycle of stars

ESA XMM-Newton: Cosmic Ornament

Image Credit: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Potsdam/L. Oskinova et al.

A new image from an assembly of telescopes reveals a pulsar that appears like a spinning cosmic ornament. Combined data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton were used in the discovery of a young pulsar in the remains of a supernova located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, or SMC.

This is the first time a pulsar, which is a spinning, ultra-dense star, has been found in a supernova remnant in the SMC, a small satellite galaxy to the Milky Way.

In this composite image, X-rays from Chandra and XMM-Newton have been colored blue and optical data from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile are coloured red and green.

The pulsar, known as SXP 1062, is the bright white source located on the right-hand side of the image in the middle of the diffuse blue emission inside a red shell.

The diffuse X-rays and optical shell are both evidence of a supernova remnant surrounding the pulsar. The optical data also displays spectacular formations of gas and dust in a star-forming region on the left side of the image.

SXP 1062 interests astronomers because the Chandra and XMM-Newton data show that it is rotating unusually slowly -- about once every 18 minutes. (In contrast, some pulsars are found to revolve multiple times per second, including most newly born pulsars.)

This relatively leisurely pace of SXP 1062 makes it one of the slowest rotating X-ray pulsars in the SMC.

Scientists have estimated that the supernova remnant around SXP 1062 is between 10,000 and 40,000 years old, as it appears in the image.

This means that the pulsar is very young, from an astronomical perspective, since it was presumably formed in the same explosion that produced the supernova remnant.

Therefore, assuming that it was born with rapid spin, it is a mystery why SXP 1062 has been able to slow down by so much, so quickly.

Work has already begun on theoretical models to understand the evolution of this unusual object.

ESA XMM-Newton: Strangely slow X-Ray pulsar discovered

The X-ray pulsar SXP 1062 embedded in the remnant of the supernova that created it. Credit: ESA/XMM-Newton/ L.Oskinova/ M.Guerrero; CTIO/R.Gruendl/Y.H.Chu.

Astronomers have discovered a very slowly rotating X-ray pulsar still embedded in the remnant of the supernova that created it.

This unusual object was detected on the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, using data from a number of telescopes, including ESA's XMM-Newton.

A puzzling mismatch between the fairly young age of the supernova remnant and the slow rotation of the pulsar, which would normally indicate a much older object, raises interesting questions about the origin and evolution of pulsars.

The spectacular supernova explosion that marks the end of a massive star's life also has an intriguing aftermath.

On the one hand, the explosion sweeps up the surrounding interstellar material creating a supernova remnant that is often characterised by a distinctive bubble-like shape, on the other hand, the explosion also leaves behind a compact object - a neutron star or a black hole.

Since supernova remnants shine only for a few tens of thousands of years before dispersing into the interstellar medium, not many compact objects have been detected while still enclosed in their expanding shell.

An international team of astronomers has now discovered one of these rarely observed pairs, consisting of a strongly magnetised, rotating neutron star - a pulsar - surrounded by the remains of the explosion that generated it.

The newly found pulsar, named SXP 1062, is located at the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), one of the satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. SXP 1062 is an X-ray pulsar, part of a binary system in which the compact object is accreting mass from a companion star, resulting in the emission of copious amounts of X-rays.

The astronomers first detected the pulsar's X-ray emission using data from ESA's XMM-Newton as well as NASA's Chandra space-based observatories. A later study of optical images of the source and its surroundings revealed the bubble-shaped signature of the supernova remnant around the binary system.

"The most interesting aspect of this pulsar is possibly its extremely long period - 1062 seconds - which makes it one of the slowest pulsars on record," comments Lidia Oskinova from the Institute for Physics and Astronomy in Potsdam, Germany, coordinator of the team that analysed the X-ray data.

Pulsars rotate quite rapidly in their early stages, with periods of only a fraction of a second, and then slow down gradually with age. "Slowly spinning pulsars are particularly difficult to detect. Only a few with periods longer than a thousand seconds have been observed to date," she adds.

ESA XMM-Newton: Neutron star bites off more than it can chew

This animated sequence of images illustrates the partial ingestion of a clump of matter by the neutron star hosted in the Supergiant Fast X-Ray Transient, IGR J18410-0535.

The ingestion of the clump material produced a dramatic increase in the X-rays released by the neutron star, which was detected with XMM-Newton.

The peak in the X-ray luminosity corresponds to the period when the accretion rate was at its maximum.

Credits: ESA/AOES Medialab

Visit the ESA Portal to see the full sequence

Chandra X-Ray Observatory: Black Hole rips star apart

This artist impression illustrates the tremendous gravitational pull of a giant black hole on a passing star.

The doomed object is first stretched by tidal forces until it is torn apart.

Most of the gas making up the star is lost from the system but some of it is trapped by the black hole and forms a disc of gas around it.

In the disc, the gas is heated to millions of degrees and emits in the X-rays, before disappearing forever, swallowed by the black hole.

It is precisely the signature of this disc that ESA's XMM-Newton has detected.

Credits: ESA and Stefanie Komossa (Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics)

Chandra X-Ray Observatory: Double Black Holes

This image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the central region of the starburst galaxy M82 and contains two bright X-ray sources of special interest.

New studies with Chandra and ESA's XMM-Newton show that these two sources may be intermediate-mass black holes, with masses in between those of the stellar-mass and supermassive variety.

These "survivor" black holes avoided falling into the center of the galaxy and could be examples of the seeds required for the growth of supermassive black holes in galaxies, including the one in the Milky Way.

This is the first case where good evidence for more than one mid-sized black hole exists in a single galaxy.

The evidence comes from how their X-ray emission varies over time and analysis of their X-ray brightness and spectra, i.e., the distribution of X-rays with energy.

These results are interesting because they may help address the mystery of how supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies form. M82 is located about 12 million light years from Earth and is the nearest place to us where the conditions are similar to those in the early Universe, with lots of stars forming.

XMM-Newton: ESA's X-Ray Observatory - 10 years in Space

XMM-Newton, the most powerful X-ray observatory ever built and launched into space, marks its 10th anniversary on December 10th. XMM-Newton's observations have revolutionised the way we view the hottest and most extreme regions of the Universe.

Scientists from the UK who have played a pivotal role in the success of the orbiting observatory, which is the size of a small bus, will be marking the occasion at a special event in Madrid organised by the European Space Agency (ESA).

"After 10 years of operation and over 600 million kilometres on the clock, XMM-Newton is continuing to perform outstandingly well," says Dr Steve Sembay, from the University of Leicester who is Principal Investigator of one of the instruments on board.

Ten achievements of XMM-Newton:

+ made crucial observations that have impacted on every aspect of astronomy

+ traced the largest structures in space: the galaxy clusters

+ probed the regions closest to stellar-sized black holes in our Galaxy, and the super-massive black holes at the heart of external galaxies

+ showed how super-massive black holes grow over time and drive the evolution of the most massive galaxies in the universe

+ tracked the production and dispersal of the chemical elements by exploding stars

+ measured powerful magnetic activity in young stars like our Sun

+ discovered that Mars has a vastly larger atmosphere than previously thought

+ played a key role in the study of the elusive "dark matter", believed to account for the missing mass of the Universe

+ observed X-rays emitted from around the Earth and around other planets such as Saturn and Jupiter

+ made the largest catalogues of cosmic X-ray emitters ever - over a quarter of a million entries in the latest release - providing vast samples of newly discovered objects

The European Space Agency's mission has three gold-coated mirror modules which focus X-rays onto advanced instruments on board.

The development and construction of two of the three science instruments was led by UK groups, including teams at the University of Leicester and the Mullard Space Science Laboratory of University College London; the latter also contributed to the third instrument on board. Other UK institutions that have been involved include the University of Birmingham and the University of Cambridge.

The international instrument teams play a vital role in maintaining the instruments in orbit and ensuring they continue to deliver good science.

The UK is also home to the Leicester-led XMM-Newton Survey Science Centre (SSC), an international consortium which plays a complementary role in the XMM-Newton project, carrying out the science data processing for every observation and using the XMM-Newton observations to compile the largest catalogues of cosmic X-ray sources ever made.

Professor Mike Watson, from the University of Leicester's Department of Physics and Astronomy and XMM-Newton's Survey Scientist said: "XMM-Newton has allowed astronomers to peer deeper than ever before into the cosmos at X-ray wavelengths, giving us new insights into some of the most extreme regions of the Universe."

"It is still one of the foremost space observatories in operation, and one of the most successful space missions, yielding over 2000 scientific publications to date. The instruments are still in very good condition and the discoveries and cutting-edge science continue to accumulate.

"Next year the University of Leicester celebrates the 50th anniversary of its involvement in space science. The success of XMM-Newton is a testament to the far-reaching implications of this research."