The ESA Cornerstone Mission XMM has been succesfully launched on
December 10th by an
Ariane-5 from Kourou.
The Lockman Hole, where an international group of scientists under the
leadership of the AIP has
performed the deepest X-ray survey with ROSAT, will be observed by XMM
during the early orbit performance verification (PV) phase.
The colour coding of the image corresponds to different X-ray energies
(0.5-2 keV red; 2-4.5 keV green; 4.5-10 keV blue). A large number of
intrinsically absorbed AGN (blue) are expected, which should contribute
significantly to the hard X-ray background.
Further information can be obtained from the XMM homepages at the
ESA or
the
AIP .
Also, ESA have set up a Web page with the
latest XMM status
