The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
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This picture shows a small extract of one of the X-ray images shot by the EPIC cameras on board ESA's XMM-Newton for the Taurus-Auriga survey project. The bright star on the left is one of many normal, young, solar-like stars in the Taurus-Aurigae star-formation region. It shows bright X-rays from very hot gas. The star to its right is AB Aurigae.
The image has been color-coded, and the orange color shows that the gas of AB Aurigae is much cooler than that in the other young stars.
The insert on the right (light-curve) shows how the X-ray intensity moved cyclically up and down with a period of about 42 hours.