February 11, 2000
There are stars whose light will never reach us, worlds we will never touch, mysteries we may never solve.
XMM-Newton First Light: X-Rays From The LMC
Birthday · February 11, 2000
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APOD published February 11, 2000. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Recently the European Space Agency released this and other spectacular "first light" pictures from its new orbiting x-ray observatory, christened XMM-Newton. A churning region of star birth and death in our small neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), this field was one of several chosen to test out XMM-Newton's x-ray imaging capabilities. The picture is a false-colour one in which low energy x-rays are translated to red, medium energy to green, and high energy to blue. Image colours therefore represent the relative million degree temperatures of the x-ray emitting regions, red being the coolest and blue the hottest. Remains of the star that exploded as Supernova 1987a appear here as the white x-ray source at the lower right, while another supernova remnant, cataloged as N157D is the brightest source at the upper left. The bluish arc (near center) also appears to be a supernova remnant whose expanding debris cloud is interacting with the LMC's local interstellar gas.