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News Release

FIRST IMAGES FROM NEW ORBITING OBSERVATORY CONSTRUCTED WITH HELP FROM LIVERMORE LAB

LIVERMORE, Calif. - Scientists have received the first space images and spectra from one of the world's most powerful X-ray telescopes, the new X-ray Multi Mirror-Newton Observatory, designed and constructed with assistance from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

The XMM-Newton fixes its sights into deep space, halfway back in time to the origin of the universe, collecting information on objects previously beyond the reach of researchers.

First observations include a vast galactic region of exploding stars spewing material that gives birth to new stars. Also captured was a pair of twin stars whizzing about one another at enormous speed, generating a dynamo that twists the stars' magnetic fields and causes intense stellar flares and storms.

In addition to X-ray images, XMM employs two spectrometers to split the X-ray radiation coming to the spacecraft into a rainbow of X- ray colors. Since elements absorb and emit light at specific wavelengths, the resulting X-ray spectra reveal not only the elemental makeup of the objects being observed, but the temperatures, densities, and velocities of the emitting material.

Lawrence Livermore researchers designed, prototyped and fabricated the devices in the spectrometers that split up the X-rays. Called reflective grating arrays, the 132-lb. devices work similar to a glass prism that splits ordinary visible light into rainbow hues.

Construction of the arrays required extreme precision in aligning the arrays' 182 gold-plated reflective grating plates, each of which is lined with grooves 7 millionths of an inch deep and spaced 60 millionths of an inch apart. The plates had to remain fixed within 40 millionths of an inch of one another to diffract the X-rays to a common detector. The delicate arrays also had to be mounted in the spacecraft in such a way that they would withstand the tremendous shock and vibration of launch without misaligning the plates.

"It was an incredible challenge to design and develop not only the reflective grating plates in the arrays, but also the large, lightweight support structures that hold the grating arrays in the spacecraft," said Todd Decker, project engineer on Livermore's portion of the XMM project. "Seeing these first results makes it all worthwhile."

Launched in December, the XMM-Newton is a European Space Agency satellite that complements the U.S. Chandra X-ray observatory launched last summer. XMM-Newton's spectrometers are a collaboration between Space Research of the Netherlands and Columbia University. Columbia physics professor Steve Kahn was the principal investigator for the reflection grating array, with funding provided by NASA. Kahn came to Lawrence Livermore for help with the project because of the Lab's expertise in precision engineering.

More information and pictures are available at http://xmm.astro.columbia.edu and the News section of ESA's image gallery at http://www.esa.int.

Founded in 1952, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a national security laboratory, with a mission to ensure national security and apply science and technology to the important issues of our time. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy.