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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Bright strips of X-ray data record the slew history of ESA’s XMM-Newton as it moves its focus between different objects in the sky. The image contains information of over 1200 individual slews made between 2001 and 2012, and covers about 62% of the sky. It is a mosaic of 73 178 individual images of 1 x 0.5 degrees and is shown in Galactic projection, with the Galactic plane lying across the centre of the image. The data cover an energy range of 0.2–2 keV.
A number of well-known X-ray sources are seen in the image, including the Vela supernova remnant (the bright white feature at the far right), the Cygnus Loop (far left), Scorpius X-1 (just above the image centre), and the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds (in the south ecliptic pole, within the concentrated region of overlapping slews at the bottom right of the image).