While interstellar dust is vitally important to Galactic cycling, necessary inboth stellar system and molecule formation, the grains. exact nature remainsmysterious. An improved understanding of dust will lead to robust models thatcan more accurately recover intrinsic spectral energy distributions, as well asprobing the grains. environment. Current grain models, constrained by UV-NIRregimes and elemental abundances, are degenerate; we must look to otherwavelength regimes to break the degeneracy and thus produce more realisticmodels. X-ray dust halos observed with XMM-Newton/EPIC are an excellent, andmostly untapped, grain characteristic diagnostic and can provide badly neededconstraints on grain models.
Instrument
EMOS1, EMOS2, EPN, OM, RGS1, RGS2
Temporal Coverage
2008-03-05T14:11:52Z/2008-03-06T12:57:07Z
Version
17.56_20190403_1200
Mission Description
The European Space Agencys (ESA) X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission (XMM-Newton) was launched by an Ariane 504 on December 10th 1999. XMM-Newton is ESAs second cornerstone of the Horizon 2000 Science Programme. It carries 3 high throughput X-ray telescopes with an unprecedented effective area, and an optical monitor, the first flown on a X-ray observatory. The large collecting area and ability to make long uninterrupted exposures provide highly sensitive observations. Since Earths atmosphere blocks out all X-rays, only a telescope in space can detect and study celestial X-ray sources. The XMM-Newton mission is helping scientists to solve a number of cosmic mysteries, ranging from the enigmatic black holes to the origins of the Universe itself. Observing time on XMM-Newton is being made available to the scientific community, applying for observational periods on a competitive basis.
European Space Agency, Dr Lynne Valencic, 2009, 'Constraining Dust Grain Models with X-Ray and Multiwavelength Observations', 17.56_20190403_1200, European Space Agency, https://doi.org/10.5270/esa-f74vvrw
