ESA - XMM-Newton updates

[bolun]

Jupiter’s mysterious X-ray auroras explained

Jupiter’s mysterious X-ray auroras have been explained, ending a 40-year quest for an answer. For the first time, astronomers have seen the way Jupiter’s magnetic field is compressed, which heats the particles and directs them along the magnetic field lines down into the atmosphere of Jupiter, sparking the X-ray aurora. The connection was made by combining in-situ data from NASA’s Juno mission with X-ray observations from ESA’s XMM-Newton.

Related article: The mystery of what causes Jupiter’s X-ray auroras is solved

https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2021/07/Jupiter_s_mysterious_X-ray_auroras_explained

Image credit: Yao/Dunn/ESA/NASA

[jacqmans]

XMM-Newton sees light echo from behind a black hole
28/07/2021

For the first time, astronomers have seen light coming from behind a black hole.

Using ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s NuSTAR space telescopes, an international team of scientists led by Dan Wilkins of Stanford University in the USA observed extremely bright flares of X-ray light coming from around a black hole.

The X-ray flares echoed off of the gas falling into the black hole, and as the flares were subsiding, the telescopes picked up fainter flashes, which were the echoes of the flares bouncing off the gas behind the black hole.

This supermassive black hole is 10 million times as massive as our Sun and located in the centre of a nearby spiral galaxy called I Zwicky 1, 800 million light-years away from Earth.

The astronomers did not expect to see anything from behind the black hole, since no light can escape from it. But because of the black hole’s extreme gravity warping the space around it, light echoes from behind the black hole were bent around the black hole, making them visible from XMM and NuSTAR’s point of view.

The discovery began with the search to find out more about the mysterious ‘corona’ of the black hole, which is the source of the bright X-ray light. Astronomers think that the corona is a result of gas that falls continuously into the black hole, where it forms a spinning disk around it – like water flushing down a drain.

This gas disk is heated up to millions of degrees and generates magnetic fields that get twisted into knots by the spinning black hole. When the magnetic field gets tied up, it eventually snaps, releasing the energy stored within it. This heats everything around it and produces the corona of high energy electrons that produce the X-ray light.

The X-ray flare observed from I Zwicky 1 was so bright that some of the X-rays shone down onto the disk of gas falling into the black hole. The X-rays that reflected on the gas behind the black hole were bent around the black hole, and these smaller flashes arrived at the telescopes with a delay. These observations match Einstein’s predictions of how gravity bends light around black holes, as described in his theory of General Relativity.

The echoes of X-rays from the disk have specific ‘colours’ of light and as the X-rays travel around the black hole, their colours change slightly. Because the X-ray echoes have different colours and are seen at different times, depending where on the disk they reflected from, they contain a lot of information about what is happening around a black hole. The astronomers want to use this technique to create a 3D map of the black hole surroundings.

Another mystery to be solved in future studies is how the corona produces such bright X-ray flares. The mission to characterise and understand black hole coronas will continue with XMM-Newton and ESA’s future X-ray observatory, Athena (Advanced Telescope for High-ENergy Astrophysics).

The team published their findings in Nature.

[bolun]

A planet in another galaxy - infographic

Using ESA's XMM-Newton and NASA's Chandra X-ray space telescopes, astronomers discovered that something temporarily blocked the light coming from an X-ray binary outside of the Milky Way.

After investigating many options, the team think a planet the size of Saturn could be responsible for blocking the light.

Related article: Could this be a planet in another galaxy?

https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2021/10/A_planet_in_another_galaxy_-_infographic

Image credit: ESA

[jacqmans]

XMM-Newton spies black holes eating the same stars again and again
12/01/2023

Two teams of astronomers using ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescope have observed repeated outbursts of light from inactive black holes that partially destroy stars again and again. This discovery is unexpected, since outbursts of black holes usually appear only once when a black hole consumes a star.

Supermassive black holes lie at the centres of most galaxies. Their masses range from hundreds of thousands to billions of times the mass of our Sun. Despite this, black holes are elusive, trapping light and remaining hard to detect.

A hidden supermassive black hole can be uncovered when a star veers on a close approach to it. The star gets ripped apart by strong tidal forces, forming a disk of stellar debris on which the black hole is feeding. Energetic X-rays, UV, optical and radio light can be detected during this process known as a tidal disruption event.

Not totally destroyed

Typical tidal disruption events exhibit a bright outburst of light, known as a flare, which lasts a few months during which the black hole consumes the star. However, two new flares with peculiar behaviour have been observed by XMM-Newton. These flares repeatedly shine bright in X-ray and UV light after the first outburst, suggesting that the stars have not been totally destroyed during the initial encounter with the black holes.

The studies led by astronomers Thomas Wevers from the European Southern Observatory, and Zhu Liu from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Germany, reveal that part of the stars may have survived their first attack from the black holes. The X-ray and UV data suggest that parts of the stars are not entirely eaten up, continue their orbit and encounter the disruptive black hole again, leading to recurring flares. This activity is called a partial tidal disruption event.

The astronomers found repeated flares from two separate galaxies hosting supermassive black holes. These galaxies lie well beyond the outskirts of the Milky Way at distances of almost 900 million light-years and 1 billion light-years.

One of the re-brightening events, called eRASSt J045650.3−203750, was discovered by the X-ray telescope eROSITA on board the Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma mission. XMM-Newton observations in 2021 and 2022 by a team led by Zhu found that the original flare was followed by repeated outbursts roughly every 223 days.

Zhu explains: “The results from our first XMM-Newton observation were surprising. The black hole showed an unusually drastic dimming of X-ray light, compared to when it had been discovered two weeks previously by the eROSITA telescope. Follow-up observations with XMM-Newton and other instruments confirmed our speculations that this behaviour was being caused by a partial tidal disruption event.”

The other tidal disruption event, called AT2018fyk, was discovered by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae. It shone bright in UV and X-rays for at least 500 days, followed by a sudden dimming. In May 2022, Thomas and colleagues used XMM-Newton to study the dramatic increase in X-ray and UV brightness 1200 days after it first appeared.


https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/XMM-Newton_spies_black_holes_eating_the_same_stars_again_and_again

[jacqmans]

XMM-Newton celebrates 25 years of breakthroughs
10/12/2024

Today, ESA’s powerful X-ray observatory, XMM-Newton, celebrates 25 years in space. From planets to black holes, the space telescope has delivered many ground-breaking observations of a variety of celestial objects. And the mission is still going strong as recent results testify. We take a look at five fascinating discoveries from the last five years.

XMM-Newton was launched on Ariane-5 from ESA’s Kourou space port, on 10 December 1999.

“ESA and its member states had invested a great deal in developing this mission and at the time expectations were very high,” notes ESA Director of Science, Prof. Carole Mundell. “And we were not disappointed: XMM-Newton has rewarded us handsomely with a treasure-trove of exceptional discoveries and continues to surprise us. Its launch marked a turning point for European leadership in X-ray astronomy and we continue to see new generations of scientists asking questions we could not have imagined when the mission was first proposed.”

“The spacecraft’s X-ray telescope is still the largest in terms of collecting area,” adds Norbert Schartel, ESA XMM-Newton Project Scientist. “Thanks to this, the mission can carry out uniquely sensitive observations of some of the most powerful and dramatic events in our Universe, advancing our understanding of the cosmos.”

To celebrate XMM-Newton's 25 years in space we selected five prominent results that the telescope has made possible in the last five years. From the Solar System to remote galaxies, they showcase the power and versatility of X-ray observations. Let’s take a trip through these fascinating findings.

Jupiter’s mystery
Setting off on our journey from the Solar System, we find that XMM-Newton helped to answer a 40-year old mystery: how do X-ray auroras arise at Jupiter’s magnetic poles?

The observations in X-rays of ESA’s telescope combined with measurements by NASA’s Juno mission, enabled astronomers to see the aurora-making mechanism at work, for the first time. As Jupiter rotates and drags its magnetic field, the field is compressed. This heats the particles trapped by the magnetic field which directs them down into the atmosphere of Jupiter, sparking the X-ray aurora.

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/XMM-Newton/XMM-Newton_celebrates_25_years_of_breakthroughs#msdynmkt_trackingcontext=2008513b-dc87-49c8-9b3a-43c2392e9cfe

[jacqmans]

From boring to bursting: a giant black hole awakens
11/04/2025

The European Space Agency's XMM-Newton is playing a crucial role in investigating the longest and most energetic bursts of X-rays seen from a newly awakened black hole. Watching this strange behaviour unfold in real time offers a unique opportunity to learn more about these powerful events and the mysterious behaviour of massive black holes.

Although we know that supermassive black holes (millions of times the mass of our Sun) lurk at the centre of most galaxies, their very nature makes them difficult to spot and study. In contrast to the popular idea of black holes constantly ‘gobbling up’ matter, these gravitational monsters can spend long periods of time in a dormant, inactive phase.

This was true of the black hole at the heart of SDSS1335+0728, a distant and unremarkable galaxy 300 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo. After being inactive for decades, it suddenly lit up and recently began producing unprecedented flashes of X-ray light.

The first signs of activity appeared in late 2019, when the galaxy unexpectedly began shining brightly, attracting the attention of astronomers. After studying it for several years, they concluded that the unusual changes they saw were probably the result of the black hole suddenly ‘switching on’ – entering an active phase. The bright, compact, central region of the galaxy is now classified as an active galactic nucleus, nicknamed ‘Ansky’.

“When we first saw Ansky light up in optical images, we triggered follow-up observations using NASA’s Swift X-ray space telescope, and we checked archived data from the eROSITA X-ray telescope, but at the time we didn’t see any evidence of X-ray emissions,” says Paula Sánchez Sáez, a researcher at the European Southern Observatory, Germany, and leader of the team that first explored the black hole’s activation.

Ansky wakes up

Then, in February 2024, a team led by Lorena Hernández-García, a researcher at the Valparaiso University, Chile, began to see bursts of X-rays from Ansky at nearly regular intervals.

“This rare event provides an opportunity for astronomers to observe a black hole’s behaviour in real time, using X-ray space telescopes XMM-Newton and NASA’s NICER, Chandra and Swift. This phenomenon is known as a quasiperiodic eruption, or QPE. QPEs are short-lived flaring events. And this is the first time we have observed such an event in a black hole that seems to be waking up,” explains Lorena.

“The first QPE episode was discovered in 2019, and since then we’ve only detected a handful more. We don’t yet understand what causes them. Studying Ansky will help us to better understand black holes and how they evolve.”

“XMM-Newton played a pivotal role in our study. It is the only X-ray telescope sensitive enough to detect the fainter X-ray background light between the bursts. With XMM-Newton we could measure how dim Ansky gets, which enabled us to calculate how much energy Ansky releases when it lights up and starts flashing.”

Unravelling puzzling behaviour

The gravity of a black hole captures matter that gets too close and can rip it apart. The matter from a captured star, for example, would be spread into a hot, bright, rapidly spinning disc called an accretion disc. Current thinking is that QPEs are caused by an object (that could be a star or a small black hole) interacting with this accretion disc and they have been linked to the destruction of a star. But there is no evidence that Ansky has destroyed a star.

The extraordinary characteristics of Ansky’s recurring bursts prompted the research team to consider other possibilities. The accretion disc could be formed by gas captured by the black hole from its neighbourhood, and not a disintegrated star. In this scenario, the X-ray flares would be coming from highly energetic shocks in the disc, provoked by a small celestial object travelling through and disrupting the orbiting material, repeatedly.

“The bursts of X-rays from Ansky are ten times longer and ten times more luminous than what we see from a typical QPE,” says Joheen Chakraborty, a team member and PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA.

“Each of these eruptions is releasing a hundred times more energy than we have seen elsewhere. Ansky’s eruptions also show the longest cadence ever observed, of about 4.5 days. This pushes our models to their limits and challenges our existing ideas about how these X-ray flashes are being generated.”

Watching a black hole in action

Being able to watch Ansky evolving in real time is an unprecedented opportunity for astronomers to learn more about black holes and the energetic events they power.

“For QPEs, we’re still at the point where we have more models than data, and we need more observations to understand what's happening,” says ESA Research Fellow and X-ray astronomer, Erwan Quintin.

“We thought that QPEs were the result of small celestial objects being captured by much larger ones and spiralling down towards them. Ansky’s eruptions seem to be telling us a different story. These repetitive bursts are also likely associated with gravitational waves that ESA’s future mission LISA might be able to catch.”
“It’s crucial to have these X-ray observations that will complement the gravitational wave data and help us solve the puzzling behaviour of massive black holes.”

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/XMM-Newton/From_boring_to_bursting_a_giant_black_hole_awakens#msdynmkt_trackingcontext=dc17c69c-9232-4124-90d6-428e7e930200

[bolun]

Astronomers discover vast filament of ‘missing’ matter

Over one-third of the ‘normal’ matter in the local Universe – the visible stuff making up stars, planets, galaxies, life – is missing. It hasn’t yet been seen, but it’s needed to make our models of the cosmos work properly.

Said models suggest that this elusive matter might exist in long strings of gas, or filaments, bridging the densest pockets of space. While we’ve spotted filaments before, it’s tricky to make out their properties; they’re typically faint, making it difficult to isolate their light from that of any galaxies, black holes, and other objects lying nearby.

New research is now one ofthe first to do just this, finding and accurately characterising a single filament of hot gas stretching between four clusters of galaxies in the nearby Universe. The astronomers used ESA’s XMM-Newton and JAXA’s Suzaku X-ray space telescope to make the discovery.

This image shows the new filament, which connects four galaxy clusters: two on one end, two on the other. These clusters are visible as bright spots at the bottom and top of the filament (four white dots encircled by colour). A mottled band of purple stretches between these bright dots, standing out brightly against the black surrounding sky; this is the filament of X-ray-emitting hot gas that had not been seen before, and contains a chunk of ‘missing’ matter.

The purple band comprises data from Suzaku. The astronomers were able to identify and remove any possible ‘contaminating’ sources of X-rays from the filament using XMM-Newton, leaving behind a pure thread of ‘missing’ matter. These sources can be seen here as bright dots studded through – and removed from – the filament’s emission.

[Image description: The image shows a cluster of bright, colourful spots against a black background. The spots are primarily purple with areas of intense brightness in the centre, transitioning from yellow to green and blue. These spots are connected by a faint purple structure, forming an irregular extended shape with hazy blobs at either end.]

Related article: “The models were right”: astronomers find ‘missing’ matter

https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2025/06/Astronomers_discover_vast_filament_of_missing_matter

Image credit: ESA/XMM-Newton and ISAS/JAXA

[jacqmans]

First confirmed sighting of explosive burst on nearby star
12/11/2025

Astronomers using the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton space observatory and the LOFAR telescope have definitively spotted an explosive burst of material thrown out into space by another star – a burst powerful enough to strip away the atmosphere of any unlucky planet in its path.

The burst was a coronal mass ejection (CME), eruptions we often see coming from the Sun. During a CME, massive amounts of material are flung out from our star, flooding the surrounding space. These dramatic expulsions shape and drive space weather, such as the dazzling auroras we see on Earth, and can chip away at the atmospheres of any nearby planets.

But while CMEs are commonplace at the Sun, we hadn’t convincingly spotted one on another star – until now.

“Astronomers have wanted to spot a CME on another star for decades,” says Joe Callingham of the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON), author of the new research published in Nature. “Previous findings have inferred that they exist, or hinted at their presence, but haven’t actually confirmed that material has definitively escaped out into space. We’ve now managed to do this for the first time.”

As a CME travels through the layers of a star out into interplanetary space, it produces a shock wave and associated burst of radio waves (a type of light). This short, intense radio signal was picked up by Joe and colleagues and found to come from a star lying around 130 light-years away.

“This kind of radio signal just wouldn’t exist unless material had completely left the star’s bubble of powerful magnetism,” adds Joe. “In other words: it’s caused by a CME.”

A danger to any planets

The matter-flinging star is a red dwarf – a type of star far fainter, cooler, and smaller than the Sun. It is nothing like our own star: it has roughly half the mass, it rotates 20 times faster, and has a magnetic field 300 times more powerful. Most of the planets known to exist in the Milky Way orbit this kind of star.

The radio signal was spotted using the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio telescope thanks to new data processing methods developed by co-authors Cyril Tasse and Philippe Zarka at the Observatoire de Paris-PSL. The team then used ESA’s XMM-Newton to determine the star’s temperature, rotation, and brightness in X-ray light. This was essential to interpret the radio signal and figure out what was actually going on.

“We needed the sensitivity and frequency of LOFAR to detect the radio waves,” says co-author David Konijn, a PhD student working with Joe at ASTRON. “And without XMM-Newton, we wouldn’t have been able to determine the CME’s motion or put it in a solar context, both crucial for proving what we’d found. Neither telescope alone would have been enough – we needed both.”

The researchers determined the CME to be moving at a super-fast 2400 km per second, a speed only seen in 1 of every 2000 CMEs taking place on the Sun. The ejection was both fast and dense enough to completely strip away the atmospheres of any planets closely orbiting the star.

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/XMM-Newton/First_confirmed_sighting_of_explosive_burst_on_nearby_star#msdynmkt_trackingcontext=43f29e41-0784-40f3-b748-5c6c0feb0200

[bolun]

XMM-Newton sees comet 3I/ATLAS in X-ray light

The European Space Agency’s X-ray space observatory XMM-Newton observed interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on 3 December for around 20 hours. During that time, the comet was about 282–285 million km from the spacecraft.

XMM-Newton observed the comet with its European Photon Imaging Camera (EPIC)-pn camera, its most sensitive X-ray camera.

This image shows the comet glowing in low-energy X-rays: blue marks empty space with very few X-rays, while red highlights the comet’s X-ray glow. Astronomers expected to see this glow because when gas molecules streaming from the comet collide with the solar wind, they produce X-rays.

These X-rays can come from the interaction of the solar wind with gases like water vapour, carbon dioxide, or carbon monoxide – which telescopes such as the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope and NASA’s SPHEREx have already detected. But they are uniquely sensitive to gases like hydrogen (H₂) and nitrogen (N₂). These are almost invisible to optical and ultraviolet instruments, such as the cameras on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope or ESA’s JUICE.

This makes X-ray observations a powerful tool. They allow scientists to detect and study gases that other instruments can’t easily spot.

Image credit: ESA/XMM-Newton/C. Lisse, S. Cabot & the XMM ISO Team