The European Space Agency has presented the first examples of the scientific results being provided by XMM-Newton. As reporters were gathered at an anniversary press conference at ESA headquarters in Paris yesterday, practically a year after launch from Kourou, the X-ray observatory was accomplishing its 182nd revolution.

Top left: X-ray image for Abell S 1101 obtained by XMM-Newton's European Photon Imaging Camera. Analysis has shown a sharp temperature drop near the outer part of the cluster, which might be associated with the transition from cluster to supercluster. Courtesy J. Kaastra, SRON, Utrecht, NL. Middle right: Past studies have implied the presence of cool gas near the centers of clusters of galaxies. This, and other, characteristics have been studied in the Abell 1835 cluster of galaxies using the EPIC and RGS instruments on XMM-Newton. Courtesy J. Peterson, Columbia Univ., NY, USA. Bottom left: XMM-Newton has observed the Abell 1795 cluster, one of the best targets for XMM-Newton to study the center of a cluster of galaxies. Its large-scale properties were measured with the EPIC spatially-resolved spectra and the high resolution Reflection Grating Spectrometers (RGS) were used to constrain the temperature structure of the cluster core. Courtesy T. Tamura, SRON, Utrecht, NL. Photo: Iridium

Whilst the spacecraft itself is operating remarkably well, the success lies not in the number of orbits but in the new dimension XMM-Newton is bringing to the field of X-ray astronomy. As promised, the observatory is not only detecting many hundreds of new X-ray sources, but it is bringing an immensely improved understanding of the environment, structures and processes at work in a great number of celestial objects.

In the presence of ESA's Director Science Prof. Roger-Maurice Bonnet and XMM-Newton's Project Scientist Fred Jansen, two of Europe's foremost X-ray astronomers presented a wide variety of the observations carried out over the past months. Prof.Johan Bleeker of the Space Research Organisation of the Netherlands, and his colleague Prof.Guenther Hasinger of the Astrophysics Institute, Potsdam, explained how XMM-Newton is breaking new ground, illustrating their talks with many new X-ray "colour" images and spectra.

The topics featured several clusters of galaxies, the largest components in the Universe, where the observatory's spectroscopy instruments have delved into the multi-million degree temperatures and cooling flows of the X-ray emitting gas between the galaxies. The Coma cluster allowed speakers to demonstrate XMM-Newton's great ability to map and analyse large extended X-ray sources.

Views of the supernova remnant N132D presented the distribution of different chemical elements and its more, or less, ionised regions. Observations of M87 have allowed the first detailed study of the interactions between the thermal and radio emitting components of the plasma in the inner region of this giant elliptical galaxy and with its view of the Lockman Hole, ESA's observatory showed that it really is peering far deeper into the Universe, going where no other X-ray mission has ever been before!